


A Far Better Thing

by fictionalcandie



Series: idiot boys making terrible decisions [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Arranged Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Time, Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Misunderstandings, Oblivious, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius has saved James from a lifetime of wedded misery to Sirius's cousin, but now they have to face the fact that what Sirius got James into instead is pretty, well. Serious.</p><p>And that joke would be funny even if Sirius <em>wasn't</em> engaged to James, but he <em>is</em>, so it's <em>extra</em> funny.</p><p>It starting to look like it might be the only thing that is, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> While I don't think it's _necessary_ to the enjoyment of this fic, I would still recommend reading the [first story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2286138) in this series before reading this one.
> 
> Massive thanks to [duva](http://archiveofourown.org/users/duva) for encouragement and idea-bouncing, in addition to being the most excellent of betas, and to [freakwithsharpies](http://archiveofourown.org/users/freakwithsharpies) for cheerleading.

…which brings them, naturally, to this moment.

There’s a faint queasy feeling in Sirius’s stomach as he watches James stare down at the first page of the Daily Prophet society section. At his _engagement notice_.

“I didn’t think it would be quite so…”

“Formal?” offers Sirius. James shakes his head, and Sirius tries, “Legally binding?”

“Big,” says James, looking a little green around the edges himself.

“We’re the Blacks,” says Sirius. He yanks the paper out of James’s hand—James is staring at it rather like Sirius imagines he would a live baby acromantula—and folds it up, small as he can. Then he tosses it across the train compartment. He doesn’t watch to see where it lands; he doesn’t care, as long as it’s not _near them_. The look on James’s face is starting to make Sirius twitchy. “It was always going to be big.”

“But _that_ big?” James asks. His voice is plaintive.

Sirius turns to him and raises an eyebrow. “Are you joking? You _do_ realise who you’re engaged to, right?”

“Yes?” says James, uncertainly.

“Then you should have expected it,” says Sirius.

“But,” James starts, just as the compartment door opens and Remus and Peter spill in, dragging their trunks and looking eager.

“Bloody good joke, mates!” says Peter, before he’s even got the door shut again behind him.

“How’d you do it?” says Remus, sounding a cross between impressed and horrified. “How’d you get the _Prophet_ , of all papers, to run it? I’d’ve thought—”

“It’s not a joke,” Sirius says.

“What,” says Remus, while Peter laughs, and says, “Sure it is!”

“I said, it’s not a joke. It’s an engagement notice.”

“But…a fake one,” Remus says, looking back and forth between James and Sirius. “Right?”

“It’s legit,” James says.

“My mother had it put in,” Sirius says, at the same time.

Peter’s eyes look like they’re about to pop out of his skull.

“Your mother _what_ ,” Remus says, his voice impossibly flat.

“She put the notice in the paper,” Sirius says.

Remus doesn’t look like he believes that. At _all_. “Why would your mother have the Prophet print something saying you were engaged?” he asks.

“Maybe because we _are_ engaged,” James says, mostly a mutter. Remus and Peter both swing ‘round to face him fully, and _stare_.

“You’re not joking,” Remus says, slowly, and he no longer sounds impressed at all; horrified has definitely won out. He looks back at Sirius. “This isn’t a joke?”

Sirius musters a smirk he feels, but only barely, and gestures at himself. “You’re looking at the future Mr Potter.”

“No he isn’t,” James says, his voice much clearer than it was a moment ago. He’s frowning at Sirius.

“Yes, he—”

“There is _no way_ your parents are letting us just drop your name entirely,” James reminds him.

Sirius scowls.

“They’re probably going to make us hyphenate,” James adds.

“Bugger.”

Remus thumps down into the seat next to Sirius. “Jesus,” he says, under his breath. “You’re getting _married_.”

#

Remus and Peter are still sneaking sidelong glances they probably think are subtle, when the train pulls into the Hogsmeade station.

Once they step off the train, there are so many other people not troubling to be subtle that it doesn’t even bother Sirius what his friends are doing.

“Blimey,” says a Hufflepuff Sirius vaguely recognises as a Quidditch player. “Is Potter actually gonna marry the—”

“Shut it, Cheung,” James calls.

“Make me!” Cheung retorts, amid elbowing and snickering from his friends.

“ _I_ could make you,” Sirius says, hand drifting for his wand, and Cheung and his friends all go quiet and start hurrying for the horseless carriages. For some reason, it doesn’t make Sirius feel as smug as he usually does when he actually manages to intimidate people successfully. He leaves his hand on his wand.

“It’s really true, then,” Sirius hears someone else mutter behind them, but he doesn’t whip his head around in time to catch who said it—and when he turns back, Lily Evans is bearing down on them, a determined look on her pretty face.

“Can I have a word, Potter,” she says, not a question.

James shrugs. “Sure.”

They all stand there a moment.

“Well?” she says, raising her eyebrows and giving him a pointed look that is _much_ better than Remus’s.

“Well, what?” James asks.

“A word, in _private_ ,” Evans snaps. She gestures sharply to the train carriage James and Sirius just left.

“Oh,” James says, looking puzzled. He glances at Sirius.

“You know,” Sirius obligingly pipes up, “we _are_ engaged. Whatever you have to talk about, you could probably say in front of me.”

Evans scoffs, and rolls her eyes. “Oh, nice try, Black. But it’s Head business, and you’re not the head of anything.”

“Well, I _could_ be the head of—” Sirius starts.

“Are you coming or not, Potter?” Evans says, dismissing Sirius and their engagement just like that. He feels a surge of irritation, made worse when he remembers that this whole situation is kind of her fault in the first place. If she hadn’t been so pretty and clever and interesting, James wouldn’t’ve spent most of last summer talking about her, and James’s parents wouldn’t’ve had to go barmy.

James heaves a heavy sigh. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and, in a much less long-suffering voice, “Wait for me, Si? I’ll just be a minute.”

“If I could be bothered with a watch, I’d time you,” Sirius says.

James grins. Sirius grins back, at least until James follows Evans back onto the train.

“You’re glaring,” Peter says, abruptly. “Why are you doing that. Please stop.”

Sirius doesn’t startle, even though he’d forgotten his friends were standing with them. He turns; Peter looks uneasy. Remus looks bored.

“What?” Sirius asks.

Peter’s gaze darts shiftily away.

Sirius narrows his eyes. “What?” he repeats.

“Nothing!” Peter squeaks.

“ _What_ , Wormtail?”

Remus clears his throat. Sirius transfers his stare to him.

“No, really, what?”

“You _do_ realise you’re wearing your ‘scaring the locals’ face, right?” Remus says, his voice bland.

“Nah, his face just looks like that,” James says, reemerging from the train carriage. Evans is behind him, an odd look on her face. She hurries past them.

“Thanks for that,” Sirius says, giving James the tail end of his sour glare. “Really nice of you.”

“You love me and you know it.” James’s tone is cheerful, completely unbothered by Sirius’s expression.

It sounds like Remus mutters “Good grief” under his breath.

“What’d she want?” Sirius asks, nodding after Evans and ignoring Remus’s contribution.

“Nothing,” James says, clearly not telling the whole truth. He must catch Sirius’s expression, because he quickly amends, “Nothing important.”

“Right,” Sirius says.

James puts his hand between Sirius’s shoulder blades and starts pushing. “Anyway, feast time, yeah? I’m starved.”

“That’s probably because you let Padfoot eat half your lunch,” Remus says, at a normal volume.

“Oi!”

#

They’re still getting interested rubbernecky looks, but Sirius can ignore those no problem if he has to, so things are mostly not that weird the rest of the night. Until, that is, they head up to bed after the feast, and James pauses, fingers curled in the back of his robes like he’s about to pull them off, but he’s—he’s staring at Sirius, instead of getting undressed.

Sirius checks himself over quickly for any oddness, a hex or a disfigurement he hadn’t noticed before, but there aren’t any. He hasn’t even got any drips from dinner down the front of his robes, despite Dumbledore making him laugh into his pumpkin juice.

“Prongs?” he says, frowning.

“We’re going to— _sleeping_ ,” James says.

It doesn’t go a very long way toward explaining why he’s frozen like the proverbial, hah, deer in a muggle headlamp. Actually, it doesn’t go _any_ way toward explaining it.

“Yes,” Sirius says, looking around to the other boys for help, but Remus is ignoring them and Peter just shrugs. “That’s generally what you do in a dormitory. I think it’s why there are beds.”

“ _Together_ , Padfoot!”

Sirius sighs, and sets down his pyjamas to move toward James, thinking that being close might calm James down, and also help him work out what’s going on in James’s head.

It doesn’t work.

All it does is make James let go of his robes and stumble two steps backwards. Sirius freezes. So does Peter, and even _Remus_ , which proves he was paying attention even if he was pretending not to.

“Prongs,” Sirius says, slowly, looking James over more carefully now. “We’ve been sharing a dorm for six and a half years.”

“You probably shared a _bed_ , over the holidays,” Remus mutters, and—Oh, lovely. Now James’s face has gone all splotchy.

Alarmed, Sirius reaches out for him, saying, “James?”

“ _Married people_ ,” James hisses, eyebrows doing some really impressive acrobatics. He jerks a hand, gesturing at himself, then twists it around in the air between them.

Sirius frowns, because he usually doesn’t have to make a conscious effort like this, and tries to deconstruct James’s thought. Married people. People who are married. To each other.

… Oh.

Couples.

And just like that, Sirius gets it. His eyes widen, and his arm drops.

“James,” he says, throwing a half-wild look toward his bed, with his pyjamas sitting on top all brazen. The old t-shirt he sleeps in doesn’t even have _sleeves_. He hopes James doesn’t notice. “Oh, Merlin, _James_.”

“Right, then,” Remus says, very loudly. “I think I’ll go brush my teeth. Peter, c’mon.”

“But I’m not ready to—”

“Come _on_ , Peter,” and so saying, Remus grabs Peter’s arm and tugs him out of the room.

Leaving Sirius alone with James.

And the bed. Both of their beds. James stares at Sirius’s, then at his own, and Sirius would swear that he can hear the gears in James’s head stalled and grinding in protest.

Still looking vaguely unhinged, James reaches again for the back of his robes, like maybe he’s thinking that pretending nothing odd is happening will make everything normal again—but Sirius licks his lips because he’s nervous, not sure right off how to fix this, and James’s arm jerks and drops again.

Sirius curses himself for being careless.

“James, calm down,” he says, forcing his voice full and bracing. _Normal_.

So they’re going to get married, so what, they knew that already, and it’s not like they _have_ to _consummate_ the marriage or anything—their families can’t exactly be expecting them to produce an _heir_ , after all. There’s no need to be going mental over a bed.

“I _will not_ calm down,” James says. He’s still hissing.

“I really think you’re overreacting,” Sirius says.

James whips his head around, away from the beds, and stares at Sirius. “How can you say that?”

“Well, for starters, Moony had a point. We _did_ share a bed over the holidays. You should remember. You were there.”

“But that was while we were alone! With nobody else in the room— _thinking_ things.”

“Thinking things?” Sirius starts, frowning in further confusion. What does thinking have do to with—oh. He sighs. “Come on, James, nothing’s changing.”

“Really? You honestly think nothing’s going to _change_?”

“Sure. I mean, why should it?” Sirius asks.

“Because we _have to get married_.”

“Yeah, so that your parents will leave us alone,” Sirius says, slowly. “I know.”

“Don’t you see the _problem_?” James demands.

Sirius crosses his arms. “No, I don’t.”

“Sirius!”

“Look, think about it,” Sirius says, pretending patience. “When have we let anybody succeed in making us do something we don’t want to? Ever?”

James looks like he’s actually _thinking_ about it, which Sirius kind of wants to make fun of him for needing to do, but on the other hand, if he’s thinking then he’s not freaking out. James has never been good at freaking out and thinking, not at the same time. “Well. Never, I guess,” he says. “I mean, besides the married—”

“Which is exactly my point, because _that_ was our idea, too.”

“Yeah, I guess,” James admits. “So?”

“So just because we’re gonna have a wedding to get them off our backs, doesn’t mean we have to do the _rest_ of it,” Sirius concludes, uncrossing his arms to sweep one around in a gesture that takes in them and their _separate_ beds. Not that Sirius is really looking forward to going back to sleeping alone—there’s always a chill to any bed that’s got just him in it, and it’s been over a year since he decided that ideally there should always be a James in any bed he’s using—but maybe the reminder that they don’t _have_ to share will be enough for James.

For another moment, James still looks like he’s thinking, so Sirius gives him a head tilt and a pointed look. It’s probably not as good as Evans’s, but he’s practiced in the mirror enough that he’s at least sure he’s beaten Remus.

“Prongs. I’m right, aren’t I? Don’t you think?” he asks.

“I—Yes, okay, I can see your point,” James says, starting to nod. “I mean, it’s not like we’re _choosing_ to make this—like _that_ , right?”

“Yeah, no, of course not,” Sirius replies, as his heart starts beating a little too quickly. He doesn’t know why it’s doing that, not _now_ all of a sudden, when it wasn’t just a few minutes ago when it might’ve made sense.

For another moment, James looks like he’s considering still acting all barmy—then he sighs, and the tension in his shoulders loosens, enough that Sirius can _see_ it going. Immediately, Sirius finds he can breathe a little easier.

Only a little, though, which is—

Whatever, he’s not going to worry about that, now isn’t the time.

His heart’s still going a little fast, too, but he decides he’s not gonna worry about _that_ , either.

“Okay,” James says again. “Okay, all right. I—sorry, mate.”

“No worries,” Sirius says, easily. He claps James on the shoulder—James, thank Merlin, doesn’t flinch away this time—and adds, “It okay for us to go to bed now?”

“Yeah.”

And, once they’ve got their pyjamas on and Remus and Peter have come back in, with wary looks on both their parts, James follows Sirius to his bed—like they’ve been doing all the last week of break, initially for the sake of staying close to each other in case their parents tried to back out, but then just because it really is nicer—without a single word more about consummation or people expecting them to do things or marrieds or anything.

Sirius is more than willing to accept this as the win it so clearly is.

#

Sirius wakes up to James snoring in his ear, James’s arm heavy across the top of his chest, and Remus staring at them through the open curtains with a scrunched-up expression on his face.

Only one of these is an actual problem worth dealing with.

“Y’r face is makin’ m’face grumpy,” Sirius mumbles, reluctant to move.

Remus’s expression doesn’t significantly change, certainly not enough to make Sirius feel better. “We’re going to miss breakfast,” Remus says.

“So stop staring an’ go eat,” Sirius says.

“We’re _all_ going to miss breakfast.”

“Moony, we know where the kitchens are. ’S not like it matters.”

“Stop _talking_ ,” James grumbles, and wriggles around like he’s trying to get _even more comfortable_ than he already was, taking up all the bed and half Sirius’s space beside. “‘M sleeping.”

“After breakfast is _class_ ,” Remus says.

“Who cares about class,” James says.

Sirius reaches up and over and smacks the side of James’s head. “Stop being an idiot,” he mumbles, without moving. “Wake up.”

“You wake up.”

“I am awake.”

“Lies and deceit.”

“Anyway, I’m going to breakfast,” Remus says, rather loudly.

“Yeah, yeah,” James says, mostly muffled by the fact that he’s still saying it _into Sirius’s hair_.

“Thanks, Moony,” Sirius says, more clearly. Remus was trying to be nice, so there’s _probably_ no good reason to let James get away with being rude. “We’ll be down soon.”

“All right,” Remus says. 

Sirius waits until Remus has left—being very careful to close the door behind him—and rolls over.

“Prongs,” he says.

“Mmrf.”

Sirius wriggles an arm up between them and pokes at James’s face. It’s still mostly slack with sleep, and it looks like he’s been drooling. Right on Sirius’s pillows, urgh. “James.”

“What,” James says, without opening his eyes.

“We do actually have to get up,” Sirius says.

“Skip breakfast. Sleep more.”

“If we do that, I’ll be hungry all morning and Moony will want to stick my head in a toilet halfway to lunchtime.”

“Won’t let him.”

“ _You’ll_ want to stick my head in a toilet, Prongs!”

“Won’t,” James lies. Sirius makes a disbelieving noise, and after a moment, James says, “Well. Not a _toilet_.”

“All the same, I’d rather avoid it,” Sirius says. He pokes at James some more, in the side this time, until James loosens his grip enough for Sirius to wriggle away from him and get out of bed. He goes to dig through his trunk for his robes, only to remember halfway there that they’d packed all their books in that one. He changes course for James’s trunk.

James doesn’t move to follow him.

“Prongs. _C’mon_.”

“Ugh, fine, ‘m coming,” James says, finally, _finally_ opening his eyes and sitting up. “Glasses?”

Sirius twitches his wand so that they fly off the nightstand and straight at James’s face. Of course, James manages to catch them even though he can’t _see_ , but then, Sirius had known he would.

#

“Ah, there you are,” Professor Slughorn calls loudly from behind them, as they’re leaving breakfast. “The happy young lovebirds!”

James looks like he hasn’t realised Professor Slughorn means _them_ , and he’s going to keep walking, which would not be the best way to start the term. Ignoring a teacher is _never_ the best way to start the term—Sirius knows this from experience. So does James, when he’s _paying attention_.

Sirius clears his throat as he stops, so James will get a clue and stop too.

On Sirius’s other side, Peter looks alarmed, and Remus looks like he can’t decide whether he wants to stay and watch or walk very quickly in the opposite direction.

Professor Slughorn comes puffing up to them, beaming pompously. “I understand congratulations are in order,” he says.

This—is new.

Apart from at the party where their parents announced it, nobody’s gone and tried to _congratulate_ them.

Sirius very carefully doesn’t look at James; he can feel from the lack of weight where James’s gaze should be on him that James is doing the same next to him.

“Yeah,” James says, in a weirdly flat voice, “thanks.”

“Had a bit of a surprise when I saw the notice,” Professor Slughorn goes on, all jolly.

At that, Sirius can’t help shooting a glance at James, finds him glancing back. The corner of James’s mouth twitches. Sirius suppresses a smirk, and looks back at Professor Slughorn.

“Yes, I bet you did,” Sirius says.

“I suppose it’s no wonder, though, you moving this quickly.” Professor Slughorn chortles. “The two of you’ve been together so long now, and all.”

The smirk Sirius has been mentally nursing dies abruptly. “Right,” he hears himself saying, woodenly.

“And I always paired you up in my classes, didn’t I,” Professor Slughorn says, and—winks at them?

James draws in a sharp breath like a hiss. “You never, we _insisted_ —”

Sirius shifts over closer, treads heavily on James’s toes in the process, and James shuts his mouth.

“Right,” Sirius says again, for lack of anything better. He fixes a smile on his face, and hopes Professor Slughorn can’t tell just how fake it is.

“Yes. Good, good,” Professor Slughorn says, apparently oblivious. He looks around once, then leans in like he’s sharing a secret. “I say, I’m sure an invitation wouldn’t be too much to—”

Oh, Merlin.

“Well, our parents are really the ones taking care of all that,” Sirius says, a little too loudly, rushing to speak over Professor Slughorn before he can get the rest of the words out, or James can get any stiffer. “But, uh, we’ll be sure to… mention you to them.”

Professor Slughorn smiles. It’s wide and pompous and just a little ingratiating, and Sirius has _never_ liked that smile.

On the edge of Sirius’s vision, James’s left hand twitches, then curls into a fist. James makes a bad-decision, punching-things sort of noise.

“If that’s all,” Sirius says, fast, and blindly thrusts his hand out to catch the sleeve of James’s robes—he gets James’s forearm, instead, but that’ll do—and starts tugging him backwards. “We have some…things to do. Engagement things. Very important. And classes.”

“Yes, yes, of course. You boys have a good day.”

“Right,” Sirius says, for the third time. He leads James away, only vaguely aware of Remus and Peter following them.

“If that becomes a trend, I’m gonna start decking people,” James mutters.

Sirius grunts. “If that becomes a trend, I’ll let you.”

#

“We can’t do that again,” Sirius says, though, after all their classes are over, once he’s had time to really think on it.

“Hm?” says James.

“You know, earlier. _That_.”

“What, talk to Slughorn?” James asks, his eyebrows going up sceptically. “I dunno how we’re going to get away with _that_ , Padfoot, we’re both taking Potions, remember?”

Sirius rolls his eyes. “Don’t be a moron, that’s not what I meant.”

“Oi, is that any way to talk to your future husband?”

“If he’s _being a moron_ , yes.”

“Is this a conversation you need us in here for?” Remus asks, sounding tired. Sirius and James both turn, to find Remus sitting on the sill of the window between his and James’s beds, with a book open in his lap; he’s pinching the bridge of his nose instead of reading it.

Sirius and James trade a glance and James, frowning, opens his mouth—no doubt to say something else stupid.

Sirius cuts him off. “Actually,” he says, getting his hands on James’s shoulders and starting to herd him toward the door, “Now that you mention it, Moony, it’s not a conversation _we_ need to be in here for.”

“It isn’t?” James says, the tone of his voice telling Sirius he’s still frowning, even though he can’t see James’s face.

Also, James is dragging his feet.

“Nope,” Sirius says, and pushes a little harder. “We’re going to the library.”

“You’re going _where_?” Peter blurts, from his bed, watching them with wide eyes.

Sirius doesn’t like repeating himself, so he ignores the question.

“We’ll be back later,” he says, breezily, and finally succeeds in shoving James out the door.

“What was _that_ about?” James asks, out of the side of his mouth, as they head down the stairs and through the common room.

“Well it just occurred to me that maybe we shouldn’t be talking about what a terrible fake couple we make around our friends.” Halfway through climbing out the portrait hole, James stumbles and nearly trips over his own feet. “See,” Sirius says, catching James’s elbow and helping keep him upright. “That’s why.”

“I thought we agreed we _aren’t_ a couple,” James hisses, pulling his arm out of Sirius’s grasp. “Remember that?”

Sirius ignores the weird feeling suddenly in the pit of his stomach, and leads them away from the tower, saying, “Of course I do. But it occurs to me that _nobody else_ knows that part.”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“ _Think_ about it, James.”

“I am!” James says, dragging his right hand through his hair and scowling. “But I don’t know what you even mean.”

“Nobody knows your parents arranged your engagement. As far as everyone else in this school knows, we’re actually so much of a couple that we want to get married as soon as we finish school,” Sirius says.

James doesn’t look any less frustrated. “Right. And, er. Do we care about that?”

“Yes,” Sirius says, willing himself to be patient—but honestly, sometimes it seems like James doesn’t even _try_ to stay aware of things. It’s like he thinks if he’s got Sirius at his shoulder and sugar quills in his bag and quidditch to think about, there’s nothing else he needs to pay attention to.

“Why?” James asks dimly.

“Because people _talk_ , James.”

“So what?”

“So, our excuse for breaking up your first engagement was that we’re in love, and people talking about how much we _aren’t_ in love contradicts that pretty firmly. And if you think that won’t get back to Bellatrix—”

“Why should we care if it does?” James asks. He’s brought out the stubborn jaw. “Why would _she_ care?”

“Because she’s a terrible person who loves causing me problems,” Sirius says.

James absorbs that. His shoulders slump a little. “Oh. And you think she’d…?”

“Make trouble if she thought she had half a leg to stand on? _Absolutely_.”

“Bugger.”

“So you see the problem here, then,” Sirius says.

“Yeah, I see it,” James mutters. He looks really sullen about it, but he’s still following Sirius, and he’s not complaining about it anymore, so that’s something.

“And you understand what we have to do?”

“Yeah,” James says, heavily. “We have to be _mushy_.”

“Well, you don’t have to sound so thrilled about it.”

“ _Excuse me_ if I’m not excited about lying to people that I’m in love with you or whatever.”

“It’s not like I’m asking you to fight trolls for me, or anything,” Sirius says, with a little more force than is probably strictly necessary. He’s hurt, though; he’d have thought he was _at least_ better than _trolls_.

“No, you’re just asking me to pretend we’re all, all _lovey_.” James’s nose wrinkles. “You made it sound like we’ll have to _kiss_.”

Sirius props his hands on his hips and gives James his very flattest look. He raises one eyebrow.

“That was _for practice_!” James hisses.

“So just pretend this is like that,” Sirius says.

“But it’s not!”

“It really kind of is,” Sirius tells him, not unkindly. When James looks like he’s opening his mouth to argue again, he adds, “Besides, we were already doing it for our families!”

James frowns. “What? No. We weren’t.”

Sirius rolls his eyes. “The _sleeping_ , James?”

For a moment it looks like James doesn’t get it.

“All the kipping at each other’s places and the bed-sharing?” Sirius prompts.

Understanding dawns behind James’s glasses. “That wasn’t about proving anything to anyone, though,” he says. His looks kind of wrinkled and disgruntled. “That was just because we wanted to and our parents finally didn’t have any excuses not to let us.”

“And was that the _only_ reason?” Sirius asks, in a leading tone, raising both eyebrows this time. He prods James’s side to get him to think faster.

“And to make sure if they changed their minds we’d both know about it at the same time?”

“I—Okay. And that, yeah,” Sirius allows, because it _had_ been a primary concern of his. He’d even been the one to point it out to James, in the beginning.

“Mostly the other, though,” James says.

“Well, all right, we knew that,” Sirius says, “but _they_ didn’t, so it had _results_ as if it were proof.”

James opens his mouth. He closes it again without saying anything, and pulls a face. “I really hate it when you make sense, you know that?” he asks, after a moment.

“It’s the great trial of my life,” Sirius agrees.

#

“… but do we have to do it so _soon_ ,” James whines, his face in both Sirius’s pillows at once, as they’re going to bed.

“Are you gonna try to weasel out of it if I give you any more time to think about it?” Sirius asks. He shoves at James’s shoulder to get him to make room.

James obliging rolls to one side, but doesn’t answer, which is more telling than any words he could’ve said.

“And that’s why,” Sirius says. “Honestly, James, you act like we haven’t been doing it since Christmas.”

“Yeah, but I don’t feel like it tonight,” James says, with a definite edge of pouting.

“We’re not talking about tonight, we’re talking about the morning,” Sirius says. “Tonight, I only want—”

“Bloody hell, _cast a Silencing charm_ , already!” Remus yells, from behind his bed curtains.

#

At breakfast, James sits down the usual distance away, like maybe he’s hoping a single night’s sleep will have been long enough to make Sirius forget about his plan, but Sirius is not so easily defeated. He slouches and slides under James’s arm before James works out what he’s doing and stops him.

“Good morning,” Sirius says, brightly.

“Hi,” James says, much less brightly. Almost woodenly, actually.

Sirius scoots in closer, hoping he manages to pass off the elbow he just planted in James’s side as a cuddle. James twitches, and makes a low, hissing noise through his teeth—he’s always hated Sirius’s elbows, says he thinks it’s unfair they’re so pointy—but then he relaxes. His arm curls a little more comfortably around Sirius’s shoulders, and he leans _towards_ Sirius, rather than being all awkwardly stiff.

“Oh-kay,” Remus says slowly, staring across the table at them. His fork is paused halfway to his mouth, and he seems not at all aware that a hunk of scrambled egg is about to fall off of it and into his lap.

“What’s wrong with you,” James mutters.

“With _me_ ,” Remus says, with the ghost of disbelief in his voice.

“Yeah, you,” James says. His arm goes kind of tense around Sirius’s shoulders again, _damn_ it, there went all Sirius’s hard work. “You’re staring.”

“Yeah, well,” Remus snaps. Then he doesn’t seem to know what to say, because nothing else comes out.

James snorts. “Eloquent, Moony. Lay off.”

“I really don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Remus says flatly.

“Your eyeballs will fall out of their sockets,” Sirius warns.

“They just might, yeah.”

“Oi, what’s all this,” Peter says, slumping down into the seat next to Remus.

“All _what_ ,” Sirius says, while James groans and drops his face down to Sirius’s head. As if Sirius’s hair is going to hide him; it’s not like it’s his own bird’s nest, which _might_ be capable of a spot of face-hiding. Sirius’s hair, on the other hand, is sleek and well-behaved and completely not up to the task.

Peter looks from Remus to James and Sirius, and back again. Sirius catches Remus giving a quick, jerky shake of his head.

“Uhhh, nothing?” Peter says.

“I knew this was gonna be weird,” James complains, barely a whisper in Sirius’s ear, but still accusing as anything.

“Just think mushy thoughts,” Sirius whispers back, doing his best to ignore Remus and Peter entirely.

James snorts.

“And shut it,” Sirius adds, firmly. His elbows maybe slips a little, but it’s not like James can prove it was intentional.

#

“Are we holding hands now?” James says, out the corner of his mouth, when Sirius catches up to him in the hallway after Charms and threads their fingers together.

“Well, I’d offer to carry your bag,” Sirius replies, “but I really don’t want to.”

“Gee, thanks,” James says. “I’m really feeling the—”

The movement of something vividly red at the other end of the corridor catches Sirius’s eye over James’s shoulder. A _brilliant_ idea occurs to Sirius.

“Oi, James, hang on.”

“Wha—”

Sirius lets his bag slide down to the crook of his elbow, so he can lift his hand and catch James around the back of the neck. He busses James’s temple, then presses his mouth briefly over James’s own, slack with surprise.

Sirius pulls back. “There,” he declares, feeling quite pleased with himself. He meets James’s eyes. There’s a frozen moment.

“What was that,” James hisses. He’s going red across his cheekbones and ears. Sirius cannot be blamed for the way he’s grinning.

“What’d you think it was,” he says.

“A _kiss_.”

“That’s exactly what it was. A kiss for my favourite fiancé.”

“Padfoot!”

Sirius deliberately puts a little more innocence into his smile. “Yes, dear?”

“First of all, I am your _only_ fiancé,” James says. He shoves at Sirius’s shoulder with his own. “And also, what the _hell_ , Si?”

“What? Evans and MacDonald were watching.”

Strangely, James does not look relieved by this explanation. “Yeah, _so_?”

“Well, I had to sell it, didn’t I? Can’t have them thinking we’re not really an _us_ ,” Sirius says. He shrugs, his stomach feeling a little sour suddenly. “Evans’d probably love that.”

“But why does that mean you had to _kiss_ —Wait, what? Why would Lily care?”

Sirius shrugs again. It’s more difficult this time. His shoulders are all tense for some reason. “Well, you know. She doesn’t like me.”

“Sirius,” James says very, well, seriously. “She doesn’t like _me_.”

Sirius boggles at him. “Wow,” he says, after a moment.

“What?” James asks.

“Nothing. You’re just really dumb, is all,” Sirius says.

“ _You’re_ really dumb,” James counters.

Sirius sticks out his tongue. “Your face is really dumb.”

“Your _mum_ is really dumb.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“Yeah,” Sirius says, laughing. “Isn’t she, though?”

#

“I thought you were going to buy me a butterbeer,” Sirius says, pouting wildly, for effect.

James squints at his face. “I’ve never seen your lip stick out that far. Are you sure it’s not about to fall of?”

“ _Prongs_. Where’s my butterbeer?”

“I was using the loo. I didn’t get you a butterbeer.”

“Why not?”

“You have legs, don’t you? Get your own,” James says.

“You were supposed to do it.”

“Why?”

“Because this is supposed to be _a date_.”

“The last time I went on a date, I didn’t have to get anyone else a butterbeer.”

“You’ve never _been_ on a date,” Sirius points out.

“You don’t know that!”

“I do so.”

“You do not—”

“Do I _want_ to know what’s going on here?” Remus asks, stopping next to their table at the Three Broomsticks but not sitting down.

Sirius turns to him immediately, while James is still busy glaring at Sirius, and says, “Prongs won’t get me a butterbeer.”

Remus blinks once, then narrows his eyes and glances back and forth between the two of them.

“ _What_ ,” James snaps, noticing.

“Did you two have a fight?” Remus asks.

“Why would we have had a fight,” Sirius says, huffing and crossing his arms.

“You tell me,” Remus says. It could be Sirius’s imagination, but he seems to be a bit farther away than he was a moment ago.

“How should I know what you’re thinking? The only thing wrong here is that Prongs refuses to get me a butterbeer,” Sirius explains.

“Well, I don’t see why I should,” James says.

“I _told_ you why,” Sirius says.

“And I said you were wrong.”

Sirius unwraps his foot from around James’s ankle and kicks him in the shin. James yelps, and they glare at each other across the table.

There’s a long pause.

Remus clears his throat. “Right. Well. I’ll just leave you lads to work out whatever this fight is about on your own.”

“Oi!” James exclaims, transferring his glare. “We’re not fighting.”

“Yeah! What even makes you think we’re fighting, anyway?” Sirius demands.

Remus, several feet away now, gives them both a flat stare.

“What!”

“Padfoot, if you two _weren’t_ fighting, you would already have got both of you a round of butterbeers,” Remus says, enunciating each word with infuriating care. “A round which, by the way, don’t think I don’t know you would’ve got Madam Rosmerta to spike.”

There’s another lengthy pause.

“That is a bald-faced lie,” Sirius declares.

“Only because you both shaved this morning,” Remus says, and then he’s turning and _walking away_.

Sirius still doesn’t have a butterbeer.

“You should’ve made him get it,” James says. He might be reading Sirius’s mind, or just the scowl on his face. Either way, it’s not like it’s _helpful_.

Sirius considers kicking him again, but notices a mixed table of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs watching them, and decides against it. “And how,” he asks, “would that have supported the idea of us on a date?”

“We couldn’t bear to be separated?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sirius says. “I don’t see what was so hard about getting me a butterbeer. I get you one all the time.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know you wanted one?” James asks.

“What, like having a butterbeer wasn’t the entire reason we came in here?”

“I thought we came in here to look like we’re on a date?”

“Yeah, and _dates get each other butterbeer_.”

A deep wrinkle appears between James’s eyebrows, one of which is half sticking up the wrong way. (It’s been like that _all day_. Sirius is going to hex the person who tells James about it.) “So why couldn’t you get it,” James says. “Like you usually do.”

“Because we’re not usually on a date!”

“I’m really not seeing your point, Si.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Sirius groans, puts his head on the table and buries his face in his hands. James sighs. His leg disappears from between Sirius’s. After a few minutes, something thumps dully against the table, and James’s leg is back.

When Sirius finally deigns to lift his head again—later than he meant to because James started playing his long fingers through Sirius’s hair and there was really no reason to disturb _that_ —there’s a full flagon of butterbeer near his elbow, and a half-empty one by James’s.

#

“Stay here,” Sirius says, freeing his hand from James’s and starting to walk off.

“I thought we were staying together,” James complains, looking disgruntled. “I mean, we’re supposed to be on a _date_ , right?”

“Well yeah, but.” Sirius grins. “I’m getting your birthday present.”

James’s face brightens. “Oh. I’ll come with.”

“Uh, no, you _won’t_.”

“Well, this isn’t very date-like. You’re a rubbish fiancé,” James says, huffing.

Sirius tries to level a stern look at him, but it’s probably completely ruined by the fact he can’t seem to stop grinning. “Take that back or you’ll get nothing but dungbombs from me.”

“Oh, you’re getting me dungbombs?” James asks, grinning now too.

“I’m getting you _coal_ ,” Sirius says, backing away.

“Good, I’ll build you a nice toasty fire,” James hollers after him.

#

“If it isn’t my little brother.”

Regulus’s shoulders hunch just a little. “Do you have to say that _quite_ so loudly?” he asks.

“Why? Not like everyone doesn’t know anyway.”

“Maybe I’m hoping they’ll forget,” Regulus says.

Sirius considers this. After a moment, he says, “I could be louder.”

“Please don’t.”

Sirius casually leans against the wall in front of Regulus, in case he gets any ideas about running off before Sirius is done talking to him. “I didn’t see you in the village this weekend,” Sirius says. “You—doing okay?”

“Oh, I’m just spiffing, eating all my meals, sleeping every night, the usual. Thanks for asking, _mum_ ,” Regulus replies, crossing his arms over his chest. “Is this where I’m supposed ask how _you_ are?”

“Yes. Or we can just pretend you did, if you’d rather.”

Regulus rolls his eyes. “Let’s pretend, then.”

Sirius beams at him. “I’m good. James is good.” Thinking about it, and because it seems like the sort of thing somebody engaged to a person they love would say, he adds, “ _We’re_ good.”

“Yeah,” Regulus says, dryly. “I heard you started snogging in public.”

Sirius scoffs. “Not snogging. Just, uh, kissing. We don’t snog.” And, on a burst of inspiration, he adds, “Not in _public_ , if you know what I mean.”

He waggles his eyebrows, for dramatic effect.

Regulus doesn’t say anything.

“We save that sort of thing for when we’re in private. It’s much better when we can—”

“Oh _no_ ,” Regulus blurts. Confused, Sirius cuts himself off.

Regulus is watching Sirius, something in his face like the time Sirius tried to convince him they should get a pixie for a pet. Sick fascination, that’s it.

“What?” Sirius asks, a little defensively.

“Did you come all the way down here from Gryffindor Tower just to give me all the gory details of you and James shagging?” Regulus demands.

“ _What_. No! We— _shagging_ —”

Sirius’s voice gets caught in his throat, which is a blessing because it was starting to sound a little shrill, and he has to choke a couple times to get it loose. Regulus just waits, his expression not changing at all.

“For your information, we,” Sirius says, demurely, when he finally manages to get his body to cooperate, “are waiting.”

“You’re _what_ ,” Regulus says, mouth falling open.

“We’re saving ourselves for marriage.”

Regulus pauses. Then, “Are you even aware of the nonsense that leaves your mouth some times, or does it operate independently?”

“I always know exactly what I’m saying,” Sirius lies.

“That’s even worse,” Regulus says, shaking his head slowly.

Sirius huffs. “Shut up and tell me how you’ve been, for real,” he says.

“That’s self-contradictory.”

“Bloody hell, Reg, just do it, before I decide I’m not interested after all.”

“Why _are_ you interested?”

“I’m your brother, you daft infant,” Sirius says. “Of course I’m interested.”

“But you just said—”

“C’mon, Reg, seriously. Why weren’t you in Hogsmeade?”

“Do I _have_ to answer that?” Regulus asks, shoulders sagging and his tone going plaintive, and Sirius knows he’s won.

“Yes,” he says, cheerfully, “you do.”

Regulus pulls a sour face. “Well, if you must know—”

“I must.”

“—It’s because, while half my housemates hate your guts, the other half apparently want to follow me around cooing about your romance with Potter, which is allegedly the stuff of fairytales,” Regulus concludes.

Sirius stares at him. That was, well, certainly not what he’d been expecting. He stares a bit more.

Regulus’s eyebrows go up. “Sorry you asked?”

“You know what, no,” Sirius replies, slowly, words coming out as he thinks them. “I’m really not. That is—”

“Horrifying?” Regulus offers.

“ _Delightful_ ,” Sirius says.

Regulus groans. His gaze darts sideways, toward the stone wall of the corridor, like he’s thinking about bashing Sirius’s head against it. Or, more likely, his own, since that would be easier.

Sirius shifts slightly into his way, to make head-bashing of any kind more difficult, and says, “It might even be the best thing I’ve heard all day. Tell me more about this legendary romance of mine.”

“I wish I’d been born a Prewett,” Regulus says, apparently to nobody in particular, because it’s _clearly_ not to Sirius, and Regulus always insists he never talks to himself. He doesn’t turn around and walk away down the corridor in the other direction, though, and he totally could if he really wanted to.

“No, you don’t. Go on, talk about my love life. I’ve got time.”

#

James is sitting by himself on one of the couches, not doing anything more interesting than pretending to read the book he’s holding propped up on the armrest. Really, he’s just staring past it into the fire, but he’s probably _supposed_ to look like he’s reading.

Sirius needs a nap, and James has a couch _all to himself_.

It’s like it was meant to be.

Sirius flops down over James’s lap, so his back and shoulders are across James’s thighs, and he can lean over and press his face into James’s side—all warm and solid and James-smelling. He can hear James’s heart thumping steadily under his ribs.

“Tired?” James asks, already dragging the fingers of his left hand through Sirius’s hair.

“Oh, no, I’m extremely well-rested thanks to all this relaxing pretending that we’ve been doing,” Sirius says.

“Hey, it was your idea.”

“Yeah, because,” Sirius starts. He has to pause to make a pleased noise when James’s fingers find a particularly nice spot to rub. “Because I’m the only one in this engagement with any sense.”

“That,” says Remus, sitting down in the adjacent armchair, “is an _alarming_ thought.”

“You’re one to talk, you’re not engaged to anybody,” James says, over Sirius’s head.

“I’m also _seventeen_.”

Sirius huffs against James side. James pets soothingly at his head, and says, “Only for, like, two more days. And anyway, I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”

“No, of course you don’t,” Remus says. He sighs, in exactly the way he does when he’s very exhausted. As though it’s trying for _him_ to have _friends_ , when Sirius and James are having to convince everyone they’re _in love_.

“You could hex him, if you wanted,” Sirius allows to James.

“I’m thinking about it,” James replies.

“Oh, good, it’s best you think things through from now on.”

“You know, I didn’t think it was possible, but you two _definitely_ got scarier over the Christmas holidays,” Peter says, from the direction of the armchair at the foot of the couch. Sirius hadn’t even noticed him approaching. Strange.

“We’re exactly like we were when we left,” Sirius mumbles, and leans his head a little more into James’s petting.

“You’re not really making me feel better,” Peter tells them, in exactly the same tone.

“He wasn’t trying to,” James explains.

“Yeah, well, you’re also _full of shit_ ,” Remus says. Which, really, that’s unnecessary.

“Oh, sure, it’s why my eyes are brown,” James says agreeably.

Sirius snorts. “They’re not brown.”

“Yes, they are,” James argues, but he’s smirking while he says it.

“No, they, aren’t,” Sirius says, firmly, and lets his own eyes close, pressing his face back to James’s side. “They’re hazel.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Really sure?”

“ _Very_ sure. Positive, even.”

“But you’re not even looking at them, how can you—”

“You’re _both_ full of shit,” Remus mutters.

“Aw, thanks, Moony!”

Remus makes the noise he usually uses to accompany rolling his eyes so hard they look like they’re going to fall out of his head, then there’s the rustle of papers and books, and shortly after, the scratch of a quill on parchment. He must be doing homework, and Peter’s gone quiet too—Now Sirius can focus on James’s lap underneath him, the fingers still combing through his hair, and maybe even relax.

“Hey, Si,” James whispers, after a little while, curling down closer around Sirius’s head, “what’d you get me for my birthday?”

Sirius cracks an eye open and glares up at him. “What’m I, stupid? No. I’m not telling you that.”

“Aww, c’mon!”

#

It’s not until the fourth time Sirius hears one of the two Slytherins following him and James shush the other that he decides he ought to do something about it. He was willing to let it slide when he thought they were actually _trying_ , but this amateurish nonsense is _unbearable_.

If he and James are going to be stalked during an evening trip to the kitchens, people could at least pay them the compliment of being _good_ at it.

Maybe Sirius would’ve been worried, if the Slytherins had been some of those dark magic groupies he always keeps an eye on when they’re near any of Sirius’s people, but it’s just a couple of twits from Regulus’s year. The ones who keep clippings of James and Sirius’s engagement notice in their book bags and stare at them with starry eyes and think nobody’s going to notice.

(Regulus complained about them _strenuously_ the last time Sirius talked to him. He’d thought it was amusing. At the time.)

“So, we have a couple of extra shadows,” Sirius says, not whispering but pitching his voice low so it won’t carry.

“I noticed,” James says back, in a similar tone. He arches a brow. “Thoughts?”

“Given our audience? I say we start snogging. Scare ‘em off with shame.”

James chokes on nothing. That isn’t promising.

“Hey, c’mon, we discussed that this might happen, it’s not like it can really be a _surprise_ ,” Sirius says.

The expression James is wearing says that yes, it can be. And a not very welcome one, at that.

“Don’t come assaulting my virtue in a rush, or anything.”

James doesn’t move. He’s still making a face.

“Oh, _relax_ , would you,” Sirius says, with a roll of his eyes, and tugs James in.

It takes precisely no fumbling to line them up, and Sirius closes his eyes at the first touch of their mouths together.

James’s lips are warm and slick over his, a little chapped still from quidditch practice last night, just a beat slow to start moving. It’s familiar, a punch of warm affection in his chest, and the slow tightening of his gut.

Sirius hasn’t done this since the last time they practiced together, back in fifth year. He can’t remember why not. 

James moans a little, shoves his left hand up in Sirius’s hair to tilt his head to a better angle. As Sirius leans into the guiding touch, it occurs to him; they’re going to get _married_. He probably _won’t_ do this with anyone else.

_Ever_.

Before he realises he’s doing it, Sirius is bringing up both hands—knocking James’s away—and framing James’s face in his palms, his fingers getting a firm grip on the sides of James’s neck, and parting his lips. He licks into James’s mouth with _intent_ , not entirely sure what he’s trying to prove but knowing he is anyway. He knows it in the thrill of satisfaction at the startled, whimpering noise James lets out; in the way his blood heats a little more when James’s hands flutter and settle uselessly on Sirius’s forearms.

James isn’t trying to pull Sirius’s hands off.

In some distant corner of his mind, Sirius registers the approach of not-stealthy footsteps from the direction of the spying Slytherins. He doesn’t bother reacting. It’s a much better use of his energy to scrape his teeth along James’s top lip, pull the bottom one into his mouth and suck for a moment.

The footsteps hurry past them, James’s hands tightening by increments with each one—he makes another one of those _noises_ —and then away down the hall.

_Good, they’re gone, I can_ —Sirius starts to think, feels himself leaning in closer, half-formed thought of pushing James against the wall, and—

As soon as the footsteps fade around the corner, James jerks backwards out of Sirius’s arms. He half-turns away, but not before Sirius catches how red his face has gone.

Sirius’s hands hang in the air, empty, for a confused moment. He lets them drop slowly.

“Well,” James says. It would be casual, but his voice is way, way too loud. “Well! _Well_.”

Sirius stares, feeling like he was walking down a staircase and missed a step. “Tale of three holes in the ground,” he says, for something to respond with, just trying to get James to look at him.

“That was—Right? Right, yes, good. Job, uh, job well done, eh?” James goes on, apparently not even hearing Sirius.

A bad joke like that deserved at least a sideways eye roll and an exasperated call of his name.

Sirius frowns. “Is this, I mean, are you all right?”

“Fine!” Still too loud.

So, not all right, then.

“Are you… angry?” Sirius guesses.

“I. What? No!”

James is yelping, which is not very reassuring. Sirius rubs the side of his jaw and tries to think with his blood still thrumming, his fingers rasping idly over faint stubble because he hasn’t bothered to shave in two days.

What he can see of James face is still red. And not, Sirius guesses, hand stilling abruptly, just because it’s from a blush.

Face flushing himself, Sirius hastily drops his hand.

“Okay, well, if you’re fine, and not angry, how about we move this party along?” Sirius says.

James whips his head around without turning the rest of his body, his eyes huge, so that Sirius can practically see the whites all the way around, even through the glasses. “ _What_.”

“Let’s get out of this draughty corridor?”

“And go where, may I ask!” James says, with all the affront of somebody’s maiden something or other.

“Uh,” Sirius falters, “the kitchens? Where we were headed before we got—sidetracked?”

That, thank Merlin, takes some of the wind out of James’s broomtail. “Oh. Um, right.”

“So, then…” Sirius raises both eyebrows, and looks pointedly down the hall toward the kitchens.

“Right!” James says, _blurts_ really, and he scuttles past Sirius and heads down the corridor.

Sirius follows, feeling—odd. Off-kilter, like he’s one step out of sync with the rest of the world, and also, sort of let down, though he has no idea why he would be. He’d had a brilliant plan to get rid of the students that’d been following them, and it had _worked_.

There’s no reason to be feeling like he’s missing something.

#

James is still being weird.

It’s been over a week since they ran across the not-so-sneaky Slytherins on their way to the kitchens, and James has been twitchy for _every single day_ of that week.

Sirius is _seriously_ not going to spend any more time worrying about it, though, because it’s the full moon. They have some running with a werewolf to enjoy. Sirius finishes hiding the map and the invisibility cloak James just handed him, and stands, already rolling his shoulders in anticipation.

James and Peter are standing exactly where they were before, Peter looking between James and Sirius expectantly.

No-one says anything. None of them move.

“Prongs?” Sirius prompts, because usually James likes to pretend he’s in charge of these things, and the rest of them all know it.

“Right,” James says. He’s not looking at Sirius, keeps darting sideways glances at him every few seconds instead. It’s making Sirius feel unsettled and itchy in his emotions place. “Let’s do this, then.”

“Right,” Sirius agrees. He flexes his fingers on his wand but doesn’t make any further move to transform.

Off to the side, Peter clears his throat. “Should I…the tree?” he asks.

“Yeah, do that,” James says.

“Right,” Peter says, edging around them, closer to the whomping willow. A moment later he’s transformed, and is slipping under the flailing branches toward the trunk.

After that, for a while, everything seems to be normal.

Except, Sirius notices slowly, for the way James is still a little _off_. He’s a moment behind or ahead of Sirius instead of in sync with him, always a bit away from where Sirius expects him to be. It’s enough to notice, but not enough to worry.

Sirius doesn’t think anything anything of it. Not really.

They veer a little too close to the edge of the forest at one point. Sirius moves to get between Remus and the school. He expects James to mirror him, to help block the way so Remus will choose the easier path that takes them _away_ , steering Remus safely the way they usually do.

But James shifts right instead of the left Sirius thought he would. He stumbles, has to vault over Sirius to avoid stepping on him even as Sirius drops onto his stomach on the ground, uselessly putting his paws over his head.

For a moment, Sirius doesn’t realise what happened, what it means.

Then he does, and he wheels around, all four scrabbling paws scattering dirt and leaves in his wake. Remus is already past them, loping fast through the trees, toward—

Toward the greenhouses, toward _the school_ , and—

Sirius’s canine ears prick up, because there are sounds that shouldn’t be there, sounds like young human laughter, and a repeated cough—the kinds of sounds students who’ve snuck out of bounds in the middle of the night might make, the drifting scent of smoke backing it up—and they’re coming from the greenhouses.

Remus howls.

The sounds from the greenhouse go quiet.

Sirius puts on a burst of speed, muscles straining, because Remus is almost at the treeline, they can’t let him past it, they promised they’d _never let him pass it_ —

Then James is there, suddenly, between Remus and the school, rearing back on his hind legs. His front hooves paw through the air, knocking Remus off balance as he tries to avoid getting hit. Sirius catches up to them, then, uses Remus’s moment of inattention to leap in and get his jaws around the scruff of Remus’s neck, and drags him to the ground. As soon as he’s down, James comes in close and puts a hoof on Remus’s chest to help hold him down—even wolfed out, Remus knows better than to try to fight both the hold of Sirius’s sharp teeth near his spine, and James’s hoof pressed hard to his rib cage at once. They go still, the only sound Remus’s bitten off snarling and half hearted squirming, and _listen_.

The sounds of the other students have picked back up, but they’re different now, hushed and uneasy. After a minute, they start fading away, moving off toward the school.

Sirius catches James’s eye, and James’s great antlered head gives a nod. Slowly, they let Remus up, but Sirius doesn’t fully release his grip. Remus howls again, resigned and mournful instead of a hunting cry.

Heart pounding, Sirius half-drags Remus deeper into the forest, James prancing around them, half-herding them both. Peter is somewhere up ahead, squeaking frantically in urgent wordless question.

That was too close.

#

Remus comes back up to the dorm mid-morning, after a shorter than usual stay in the hospital wing. They rest of them are all sitting on their beds in pyjamas, like this is any other Saturday morning. It’s a poor pretence at having slept the night before. James isn’t even in the right bed, sitting on his own instead of Sirius’s. Remus sits down too, the rustle of his robes loud in the quiet room.

They all stare around at each other. Every one of their faces is too pale, all of their eyes too wide.

None of them say anything.

#

The Monday after the full moon is James’s birthday. Sirius expects whistling and swaggering out of him on the way to breakfast. He gets tense, hunched shoulders and skulking, instead.

“You _do_ know what today is, right?” Sirius finally can’t resist asking, as they sit down at the table in the great hall.

“Of course I know what day it is,” James mutters. “There are lessons. It’s Monday.”

“And?”

“And, what?”

“It’s also your birthday,” Sirius says flatly, a little disbelieving.

James looks at him strangely, halfway to weirded out. As though _Sirius_ is the one acting odd—the nerve of him!

“Yeah, I _know_. Legal for everything, me,” James says. It’s said with only a fraction of the smugness that Sirius would have expected usually, and after— _nothing_. Sirius waits for several long moments, but that’s _it_.

“Well?” Sirius asks.

“Well, what?”

Sirius arches an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to ask where your present is and what I got you?”

“Oh. Right,” James says. He breaks eye contact with Sirius, shoving his fingertips under his glasses and rubbing at his eyes like Sirius isn’t going to realise that’s an excuse to look away from him. “So what’d you get me, then?”

It’s less enthusiastic than Sirius was expecting.

Apparently than Remus and Peter were expecting, too, because Sirius isn’t the only one frowning at James.

They’re still doing it when James drops his hands to figure out why they’re all being quiet, and he catches them at it. “What?” he snaps.

“Nothing,” Sirius says quickly. He pulls James’s present out of his bag and thrusts it at him, even though he’d really been meaning to make him wait and whine for it a while. James was supposed to be good for at least a quarter hour of pestering and outlandish threats, Sirius is _extremely disappointed_ in him. “Go on, open it.”

And then, of all bloody things, James _hesitates_.

Sirius barely manages to keep himself from saying _what the fuck_ out loud.

“Prongs?” Peter says, tentative and wary, like he’s thinking maybe he needs to dive away from the table and out of the line of fire for—whatever he probably thinks James would do if James went _absolutely mad_ at breakfast.

Sirius does not really blame him.

“Yeah. Right,” James says, under his breath. He starts carefully peeling away the folds of wrapping, rather than tearing gleefully into it.

He was supposed to rip the paper. Sirius had been careless about his taping _on purpose_ because James was going to be ripping it.

Sirius bites his tongue on a protest.

“Oh,” is all James says, when he sees the extravagant racing broom maintenance set under the wrapping. It includes, amongst other fancy-sounding things, two unnecessary sizes of twig-clippers, a whole array of textured wiping clothes, and at least three separate kinds of handle varnish. Sirius was picturing salivating when James opened it; some whooping, at minimum. All he gets is _oh_.

Sirius bites his tongue harder. Peter makes a confused noise. Remus frowns.

“This is pretty nice, Padfoot,” James adds, not looking up. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Sirius says. He forces his voice to sound light. “Happy birthday.” Then, because they’re in public and Sirius is maybe feeling just the tiniest bit vindictive, “Anything for you, _darling_.”

_That_ brings James’s head up, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. Sirius smirks widely, tries to make his face as disgustingly goopy as possible.

“Whatever would I do without you, love,” James simpers, all cloyingly sweet and unlike him. He actually lifts a hand and _pats Sirius’s cheek_ , like he’s suddenly his own grandmother or something.

Sirius is a strong believer in pretending everything’s fine until you come up with an actual plan to sort out your problems. So he keeps smirking, and turns to eat his breakfast, resolutely ignoring the uneasy hollow feeling in his chest.

#

“Coming to bed?” Sirius asks, as he’s turning down the covers, because a full day of pretending everything is normal and excellent has been working just fine for him, and he doesn’t see any reason not to carry it over into the night. Possibly the next morning, as well, if necessary. Sirius is adaptable like that.

“I’ll be along in a bit,” James says, without meeting Sirius’s eyes.

Sirius considers, for a moment, pushing; making James come to bed _now_ , with him, like usual, or maybe just making James _talk to him_. He discards it almost immediately, though, because this is James, and James sometimes acts like talking about things gives him hives, or something.

Just look at last autumn when they still thought James was gonna have to marry Bellatrix, and how long it took him to ask Sirius to be his best man then. It took him ages, _months_ even—and that was an easy question with an _obvious_ answer.

“All right,” Sirius allows, instead, reaching out to give the back of James’s neck a quick squeeze. Remus and Peter are watching them really obviously from the corners of their eyes, which is maybe why James doesn’t do more than twitch once before he leans into it.

Sirius doesn’t call him on _that_ , either, because he is a good and understanding best friend. He lets go, and crawls into bed, instead.

The last few days have been weird, with all of them still thinking about the full moon. Sirius is probably just imagining that James is acting cooler to him, in particular. It’s probably all in his head.

Repeating that to himself, Sirius finally manages to drift off, curled on his side of the bed so James will have room when he comes up to sleep.

#

James still isn’t in bed next to him when Sirius wakes up in the morning. In fact, the other side of the bed is cold, like he hasn’t been there for a while—or maybe not at all. And the curtains on James’s bed are drawn.

So, not imagining it, then.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally done! This chapter would have been up a lot sooner had I not been sick for a week. It seems like an excellent day to be posting wedding fic, though, what with the US Supreme Court decision today (:D :D :D), so I guess it works out.
> 
> Thanks again to [duva](http://archiveofourown.org/users/duva) for beta and letting me talk about this fic until I’m sure she had to be sick of it. This fic wouldn’t be nearly as awesome without her. She’s the best.

Sirius waits fifteen minutes, sitting up in bed alone, and then he goes down to the common room to find James. He’s not going to make the same mistake a second time.

“Coming to bed?” he asks, standing over the table where James is sitting. He’s playing solitaire with an Exploding Snap deck. He must’ve been at it for a little while at least; his eyebrows are already a bit singed.

“I’ll be along,” James says, exactly the same as the previous night, and he should know better than to pull something like that because Sirius isn’t _stupid_.

“Try again,” Sirius snaps.

“What?”

“I want an actual answer. Are you coming to bed, yes or no?”

There’s a long moment of silence. James doesn’t look at him.

“Go to bed, Sirius,” he says, very quietly.

Sirius sucks in a sharp breath. He has to work to let it out slowly. James keeps on not looking at him.

“Fine, then,” Sirius says. He feels cold, all of a sudden, and he doesn’t really think it’s because the fire is all the way across the room. He folds his arms over his chest to disguise the way he hugs himself. “ _Fine_.”

“Okay,” James says, like a great stupid prat. “Good.”

Sirius stands there another minute, but James doesn’t take it back or start looking at Sirius or _anything_.

“Right. Well, your side of the bed’s open, if you want it,” Sirius says. He turns to go upstairs.

“Good night,” James says to his back.

Not _hardly_.

#

“Heya,” Sirius says, flopping down onto the other end of the sofa where James is sitting, his nose in a book. A _school book_. It looks like he’s actually _reading_ it, even.

James tenses, but when Sirius doesn’t touch him, he seems to relax enough that he mutters, “Hey, Padfoot.” He doesn’t offer anything else, though, and the stiff line of his spine doesn’t soften at all. He keeps his eyes trained on the open pages like he’s still reading, but Sirius can tell he’s only pretending now.

Sirius nods toward the book, even though James isn’t looking at him. “You do that essay for McGonagall yet?” he asks, trying to sound light and cheerful.

“Finished it last night,” James says, without otherwise moving.

Of course he did. Probably while he was avoiding coming to bed _for the sixth time in a row_.

“That’s great,” Sirius says, on a smile, but he doesn’t feel cheerful about it _at all_. He kind of feels like kicking James, actually, but that’s probably not how you’re supposed to get your fiancé to look at you. Or, y’know, go back to sleeping in your bed again. Instead, he says, “I didn’t do it yet,” just to see what James will do with the lie.

“You ought to do it soon,” James says. His gaze darts, snitch-quick, to Sirius, and then back to the book. If Sirius hadn’t been watching for it, he probably would’ve missed it in the flash of firelight off the lenses of James’s glasses. “Maybe you should go work on it now.”

Every muscle across Sirius’s shoulders tightens. He can feel them going, but even though he tries, he can’t stop them. It’s got to be obvious, how rigid he suddenly is.

James does not look sorry, keeps giving the damn book an impassive stare. Like he doesn’t even care that Sirius knows he just got _dismissed_. By _James_.

“Right, then,” Sirius grits out, through clenched teeth. He gets up. “I guess I’ll do that, then.”

#

Sirius doesn’t _mean_ to pick a fight about it, he really doesn’t—recently he’s been trying to be _nice_ to James, genuinely nice, even when they’re alone, because maybe that will help him get over whatever it is keeping him out of Sirius’s bed at night and away from Sirius’s hands during the day—but somehow he still finds himself picking at James and fighting with him.

He does feel a little justified, though, because, _honestly_.

“No, I _can’t_ be your best man,” Sirius says, pinching the bridge of his nose between both thumbs. The rest of his fingers are all laced together in front of his face, like a sort of obstacle so he doesn’t have to actually _look_ at James for this. He doesn’t understand how they can possibly even need to discuss this. “ _Of course_ I can’t.”

“But you already said you were going to,” James says. When Sirius reluctantly drops his hands to get a look at him, James has his eyes narrowed at Sirius, and it is only because Sirius doesn’t want to have to magic James’s glasses back together afterward if he actually manages to hit him, that saves James having something thrown at his stupid face right now, campaign of friendliness be damned.

“Yeah, but that was before we got engaged! I’m your _future spouse_ now.”

James does not look swayed by this reminder. His jaw’s set all mulishly, in that way Sirius usually likes. Well, likes when it’s not directed at _him_ , anyway. “Is there some rule that says you can’t be both?” James asks.

“Oh, I don’t know, _logic_ , maybe?” Sirius says.

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Apparently, nothing.”

“I mean,” James says, stressing the words impatiently, “as long as we’re actually getting married, I don’t see why anyone should get to complain about how we do it.”

Sirius pauses. “All right, yeah, I’ll give you that, it’s a pretty good attitude,” he says. “But that doesn’t change that it isn’t how this works.”

James’s jaw miraculously manages to jut out a little farther. “Why not.”

“Grooms already have a job to do at weddings, you can’t go adding more responsibility,” Sirius says. And, as James looks like he thinks he’s got more of an argument to make—which, he _doesn’t_ —Sirius hastily adds, “They already have to _get married_ , don’t you that’s enough work to be expecting from them?”

There’s a moment of silence.

“Well, fine. But if you’re not gonna be my best man any more,” James says, tilting his head a little, “I don’t see why _you_ should get Moony.”

“Because I said I wanted him first!”

“You can’t _call dibs_ , you big knob, that’s not how it works either!”

“What do you know about it, you thought grooms could do double duty!” Sirius throws his arms in the air. “How many weddings have you even been too?”

“Exactly as many as you have,” James says, shades of accusation starting to creep into his tone.

Sirius crosses his arms. “Not true. I didn’t take you to my third- or fourth- or whatever-cousin Cassius Crouch’s wedding.”

“No,” and James’s tone has absolutely dropped all the way into accusing, “because _you were seven_.”

“That’s still one more wedding than you’ve been to.”

“And, what, that makes you an _expert_?”

“More of one than you, apparently!”

“Oh, come off it, Si,” James snaps. “That’s bollocks.”

“It is not.”

“Is so. You’re just making stuff up.”

“Why would I bother?”

“Because you don’t want me to have Moony,” James says.

Sirius uncrosses his arms to throw them in the air. “No, I don’t—because I _already picked him_ for my best man!”

“Yeah, but now _I’m_ picking him.”

“You can’t just steal my best man, James.”

“Sure I can,” James says, and he looks so smug that Sirius almost reevaluates his decision not to throw anything. “You’ve a brother you can ask instead, I haven’t.”

“Reg isn’t a _default_ best man, what kind of sense does that even—”

“You two do realise I can’t actually be either of yours’ best man, right?” Remus says, from the other side of the dorm. Sirius hadn’t heard him come in.

“Why the hell not?” James demands, seamlessly switching his annoyance from Sirius to Remus.

Remus stares at them.

“Yeah, Moony,” Sirius chimes in. He smiles, and if it’s a little bit mean, well, he’s still annoyed, too, and nobody asked Remus to involve himself. “Why not?”

“I’m a werewolf,” Remus says, slowly.

“Well, _obviously_ ,” James says, just as Sirius says, “It’s not like we _forgot_.”

“I’m also _a half-blood_.”

Sirius lets go of his irritation enough to share a blank glance with James, who clearly doesn’t get it, either. “Yeah, and?” Sirius prompts.

Sighing, Remus covers his eyes with one hand. “God and Merlin grant me patience,” he says, probably to himself, or at least to not-them.

“You don’t really need any more, it’s already almost creepy,” Sirius says.

“I should not be surprised I have to have this conversation with you, should I,” Remus says. Sirius decides to be generous and assume he’s still talking to himself.

James huffs, so maybe he’s not feeling as generous. “Moony, seriously, what are you talking about?”

“Your parents,” Remus explains, in the gentle voice he mostly uses on first years. “You know, the _blood supremacists_?”

“What about them?”

Remus’s eyebrows go up. Way up. “Oh, I dunno, don’t you think they might object?”

“Oh, please,” James scoffs, and Sirius says, “As if we’d let that stop us.”

“Maybe I’d _like_ you to let it stop you.”

Sirius shares another look with James, who shrugs, still just as confused. Maybe a little hurt, too, if the tense little crinkles at the corners of his eyes are anything to go by.

“What, do you not want to be our best man?” Sirius asks

“No, of course not. I’d be honoured,” Remus says, and if it comes out a little dryly, at least he _looks_ sincere about it. “I just don’t think it’s very _wise_.”

“C’mon, Moony, we wouldn’t let them do anything to you.”

Remus sighs. “That wasn’t really my biggest concern, but thank you.”

“Well, what else are you worried about, then?”

“While I’m sure there’ll end up being some kind of scene at this wedding,” Remus says. “Because, well, really, it’s _you_ two.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” James lies, and Sirius adds, “Absolutely none.”

“Uh-huh. But, no, I really don’t want whatever scene is bound to develop to be about _me_.”

“Why not?” James asks, sounding genuinely curious. 

Remus just looks at him. Then at Sirius, who raises an eyebrow; _he_ wants to know, too.

“Unlike some people I could name,” Remus says, rolling his eyes, “I don’t actually enjoy calling attention to myself. I’d rather watch.”

“We don’t enjoy it,” Sirius says, properly annoyed now, propping his fists on his hips. “Why would you say that?”

“We just don’t _mind_ it, when it’s necessary,” James adds.

“Yeah, exactly.”

Remus pauses, his eyebrows scrunching up. Then he sighs, _again_ —when did he turn into an exasperated grandfather?

“Leaving aside the fact that you’re both absurd human beings and it’s probably the only reason you can put up with each other,” Remus says, ignoring their synchronised gasps of outrage like a master, “I still think including me in the wedding party is unwise.”

Sirius scowls. “Who are we supposed to ask instead, then?”

“Um, Peter?” Remus says. He hasn’t stopped looking at them like he thinks they’re insane, though. “Just maybe?”

“ _No_ ,” Peter calls, his voice mostly squeak, from somewhere in the direction of the washroom, and okay, Sirius really has to figure out how people keep managing to sneak up on him like this.

“No?” James asks, frowning toward the washroom. “You don’t want—”

“I’m not involved in this and _you can’t make me_!” Peter yells.

Sirius shares a look with James, and shrugs. James shrugs back, and they both look back to Remus—who looks like he’s just bitten into something unexpectedly sour.

“I would ask if either of you had any other friends—”

“He does _not get to ask Evans_ ,” Sirius snarls.

“—but I was afraid _that_ would happen,” Remus finishes, shaking his head like he’s disappointed, or some other nonsense.

James talks over him, expression darker than ever, and aimed right back at Sirius. “Why would I ask Lily?”

“Well, I don’t know, you certainly seem to think she’s pretty enough,” Sirius says, words all sharp edges in his mouth.

In the sudden quiet, the washroom door slams closed, and on the other side of it, the water starts running.

“Oh, bugger, is this _that_ kind of conversation?” Remus says. Sirius only knows that his eyes are going wide because Sirius himself is resolutely not looking at James. “Okay, suddenly regretting being here for this.”

“Ignore Si,” James says, obviously to Remus. His voice sounds tight. “He keeps saying things like that, it’s not important.”

“If you say so,” Remus replies, but he doesn’t sound like he believes him.

“But you really do need to be my best man,” James says. He’s pushing, and Sirius would yell at him some more for being greedy, but he’s busy not tackling James to the floor and digging pointy elbows into all the softest bits of him until he cries uncle and takes back that crack about it not being important. Sirius had a _point_ , and it was even a _good_ one, James shouldn’t’ve been ignoring him.

“I think ‘need’ is a pretty strong—”

“Besides, _my_ parents,” and that part James must say pointedly, from the side of his mouth closest to Sirius, from the way it comes out all sharp and biting, “probably won’t care _that_ much, even if they do find out you’re a half-blood. Or a werewolf.”

Remus throws a cautious look—at _Sirius_. Sirius pretends not to have seen it. “Well. I don’t know, James,” Remus says, when he doesn’t get anything out of Sirius.

“And I promise nobody will make you cause any scenes,” James adds.

“That’s comforting,” Remus mutters.

“Just, c’mon, Moony,” James says, and at this point there isn’t even any pretending that his tone has crossed the line straight into ‘wheedling.’ “I don’t really have anyone else. Will you do it or not?”

“We’ll owe you,” Sirius adds, giving up. Let James bloody well have Remus, if it’s really that important to him.

“When you put it like that,” Remus says, shaking his head again, but starting to smile, too, as though he’s reluctantly amused that they’ve talked him into it. “How can I refuse?”

“Excellent,” James says, voice thick with satisfaction. “Thanks, Moony, mate.”

“Don’t mention it. No, really, don’t,” Remus says. He’s still smiling.

James flashes him a quick grin. “Don’t worry, we won’t need to, now that it’s all settled. Well, settled, once Si tells the brat, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Sirius says. And, at James’s pointed, narrow-eyed look—too much like the way James was looking at him at the start of the conversation, has been looking at him far too often lately—he goes on, “Yeah, _fine_ , I’m gonna go take care of it. Right now.”

He snatches the Map from James’s trunk on the way to the door. James doesn’t actually _say_ anything, but he _looks_ it really loudly, eyes darting to his invisibility cloak, so Sirius heaves a wordless sigh and grabs that, too.

He just hopes that Regulus isn’t holed up in the Slytherin dungeon for the evening yet. Sirius could still get to him, yeah, but explaining _that_ without incriminating either himself or James would take a lot of energy, and he’s already feeling heavy-limbed and exhausted. His _brain_ is tired—and so is something deep in his chest, but Sirius doesn’t understand that so he’s ignoring it.

Whatever it is has been that way since James’s birthday, anyway.

#

“There you are,” Sirius says, as if he’s been looking all over, tucking the last corner of the cloak down out of sight into his bag. If he’s lucky, Regulus won’t ask why he’s carrying it.

On the far edge of the tower platform, Regulus twitches, but thankfully it’s only a small twitch, and he doesn’t startle beyond that, so Sirius doesn’t have to summon him back over the edge to safety or anything.

“What’re you doing all the way up here?” Sirius asks. He lets the door out onto tho top of the Astronomy Tower thud closed behind him, and crosses to sit down at the edge next to Regulus.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Regulus counters. “Don’t you have things to do elsewhere? Like stick your tongue down James’s throat in front of my housemates?”

Sirius chooses to overlook that last part, for a variety of reasons—all of which he hopes Regulus will mistake for generosity and be grateful about. “Actually, I’m up here to talk to you.”

“Oh, this should be good,” Regulus says, half under his breath.

It catches Sirius a little off-guard. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks.

“Nothing. So, what, did I miss another Hogsmeade weekend I don’t know about?”

“Not unless I didn’t know about it either,” Sirius says. “No, it’s nothing like that.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. James sent me, this time.”

Regulus’s head turns very slowly, until he’s staring at Sirius straight on, expression suspicious. “James did.”

Sirius nods.

“James, your fiancé, sent you out of the tower at eight o’clock on a Friday, to talk to me,” Regulus says, flatly.

“Yeah, ’s what I said.”

“Am I dying or something?”

“Oh, sod you, you pillock,” Sirius says, rolling his eyes hard. He resists the urge to shove at Regulus, because that would be difficult to explain to his parents, and anyway, he doesn’t actually want his brother to die horribly. Probably he doesn’t want his brother to die horribly. “We finally talked about the wedding party, that’s all.”

“Oh, shit,” Regulus breathes.

“Yeah,” Sirius agrees. “So will you be my best man, or what?”

“I don’t want to,” Regulus says, shaking his head. “I don’t want anything to do with that farce.”

“Aw, Reg, c’mon.”

“No. It’s bad enough I have to be there at all. Absolutely not.”

“But I really need you to,” Sirius says. He reminds himself that it doesn’t count as begging if he doesn’t _admit_ to it later, and adds, “ _Please_?”

“You do not need me to be your best man, you need to get your head examined.”

“I do not.”

“What on earth makes you think that anything would get me to agree to participate in this?” Regulus asks.

“Well, the fact I apparently don’t have any other choice definitely contributed,” Sirius says.

Regulus snorts.

“Besides that,” Sirius says, “I’m your only brother, and this’ll be my only wedding. You’d think you’d be glad I’m not trying to ignore you.”

“Except I’ve been trying to get you to ignore me for at least the last three years,” Regulus says, sounding painfully unimpressed.

“Well you’ve been doing a terrible job of it.”

“Don’t I know it.” Regulus sighs, puts his arms out behind himself and leans on them. “Anyway, you’re only eighteen, how can you know it’s gonna be your only wedding?”

“I know. It will be.”

Regulus’s eyebrows inch up. “But how?”

“I just do.”

“That’s either really touching, or really disturbing,” Regulus says. “I can’t decide which, and I’m not sure I want to.”

“Oh, shut up,” Sirius says, rolling his eyes. “I’m marrying _James Potter_. There’s nowhere to go from there but down.”

“You’re probably the only person in the entire United Kingdom who thinks that,” Regulus mutters.

“Oi, watch your mouth. I could still shove you off this tower and claim it was an accident.”

“But if you did that, who would be your best man?”

Sirius shrugs, and says, “Well, if you’re not gonna do it anyway, I’m not really losing out there, am I?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Regulus snaps, in absolutely the most long suffering of tones, “of course I’m gonna do it.”

Sirius grins, and doesn’t push him off the Astronomy Tower.

#

Sirius isn’t hiding from James. He’s _not_. He just happens to be lurking in the library, where James wouldn’t be likely to look for him, even if James _wasn’t_ at Quidditch practice. And James is definitely at Quidditch practice, as he made sure to announce very loudly in the common room—accompanying the words with a smack to Sirius’s arse—right before he left the castle.

Which might be the reason Sirius was hiding, if he was hiding, which he isn’t.

He’s alone, and in the library, but Evans sitting down next to him him is still more unusual than any other part of the situation.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hi,” he says back, warily. “Is there… something you want?”

Evans doesn’t answer. For a minute or so, she just stares at him. It’s a little unnerving. Her eyes are _very_ green.

“You know, I thought James would ask me out this year,” she says, abruptly, in a causal tone that sounds practiced. Rehearsed. “Especially when we got made Head Boy and Girl.”

Sirius isn’t surprised that she thought that, and he doesn’t bother acting like he is—though he _is_ a bit thrown that she apparently felt the need to come and confess it to him. “Yeah, I figured,” he says.

“I mean, I’d kind of expected it for a while. Was surprised when he didn’t.” Evans pauses, and raises an eyebrow. “But the last couple months or so, I started to realise why he never did.”

“Oh you did, did you.”

“It’s totally rude to ask someone other than your fiancé to go to Hogsmeade with you,” Evans says. The look she’s giving him now is almost her pointed one.

Well, at least they’ve got Evans fooled, then. He would feel better about that, he really would, except James has apparently decided to impersonate an _Imperius_ -ed person lately, and it really makes Sirius wonder just how many people exactly James thinks he’s fooling. And about _what_ —because if James is actually anything approaching happy lately, Sirius will eat the Sorting Hat itself.

“Yes,” Sirius agrees, hoping he doesn’t sound as stiff as he feels. “Right. Rude.”

Evans keeps staring at him like that for a minute longer. Then she huffs out a loud breath and rolls her eyes. She props her arms on the desk of the carrell, and leans on them, looking a lot looser all of a sudden.

“Look, Black,” she says, more easily. “I’ve noticed you glaring at me a lot more since we got back from break, and I just wanted to let you know, if it’s because you’re worried I’m gonna try to steal your man, you don’t have to be.”

“I wouldn’t let you take him even if you tried,” Sirius says, with more confidence than he strictly feels just at the moment.

“Wouldn’t expect you to,” Evans agrees. She gives Sirius a cautious little smile, obviously trying it out. After thinking about it, Sirius rewards her with a quick quirk of his lips. After all, she probably doesn’t realise it’s practically her fault he and James have to get married.

Evans relaxes even more.

“But yeah,” she says. “For a while I thought something might happen with James, but I don’t anymore. I wanted you to know. So you’d stop trying to kill me with your eyes.”

“Who says it has anything to do with James?”

Evans snorts. “Doesn’t it?” she asks.

“I admit to nothing,” Sirius says.

“What a surprise, you not confessing,” she replies, and it almost sounds like she’s trying to be teasing. After a moment, she adds, “Would it make you feel better if I went out with someone else?”

At that, Sirius does have to stare at her, startled. “As long as it’s not James, why would I care?”

She grins again. “Maybe I also want to know if your brother is seeing anyone.”

“No,” Sirius says, firmly, appalled, “You don’t.”

“Okay, you’re right, I don’t,” Evans says, laughing. She gets to her feet. “Just. Remember you don’t have to kill me, okay, Black?”

“Don’t make a move on my fiancé, and we’re good,” he promises.

#

“Oh, crap,” Sirius says under his breath, when James takes a corner too fast trying to stay just out of Sirius’s reach—he must’ve noticed Sirius thinking about making him hold hands—and almost runs into Snape, of all people. Snape, whose face is already going dark and kind of _nasty_.

Sirius takes two fast steps so he’s alongside James.

“If it isn’t the future bridegrooms,” Snape says. His mouth is pulled up in his usual sneer. Sirius more than usually wants to tell him where he can shove it.

“What’s the matter, jealous you’ll never be one?” Sirius snaps.

But of course Snape takes no notice, because that would be too easy for Sirius’s life. Instead, Snape is looking straight at James, as if he didn’t hear Sirius at all; like maybe he can’t even see Sirius standing right next to him.

“One cruel little mind marries another—I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”

“Shut up,” James says, and Sirius whips his head around to stare.

Sirius hasn’t heard James’s voice sound like that since Sirius messed up and sent Snape under the Whomping Willow after Remus, and James nearly punched Sirius in the face for being _dumb_. It’s worse than the bad-decisions, punching-things sound, it’s an enraged wanting-to- _hurt_ -something sound. James hardly _ever_ sounds like that.

Sirius doesn’t know what about this conversation brought that tone out, but he _does_ know he doesn’t like it.

“Hey, now, Prongs,” he starts to say, not even caring if it’s obvious how uneasy he is—but he’s apparently not the only one who noticed that James isn’t his usual self, and he doesn’t get out anything more. 

“What’s the matter, Potter?” Snape asks, thick dark eyebrows going up almost to his oily hairline. “Don’t like hearing someone speak the truth about yourself? And your little… _fiancé_?”

He says the last word like it’s dirty, like there’s something unclean about them being engaged, and Sirius wants to cut his tongue out with a rusty knife. A spell is too _good_ for him.

“I told you to shut up,” James snaps.

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped out and bit you on the arse,” Sirius can’t resist saying. Okay, so he doesn’t actually try very hard to resist, but why would he? Either way, the result is that he says it, and with a sneer that’s at _least_ as impressive as Snape’s, too.

“Ew, Si, who wants to think about _his_ arse,” James says in a tight voice, eyes still on Snape.

Snape’s nostrils flare. He shifts his glare to Sirius for a moment, and then straight back to James, like Sirius is filth on the hem of his robes that doesn’t even deserve to be addressed directly. “You know, Potter, it’s probably a good thing you’re taking Black off the market.”

“And why is that.”

“He’d probably die miserable and alone otherwise. What bastard could really want someone who goes around nearly getting people _kill_ —”

James makes a noise, a tiny, almost hurt thing, cut-off right away, like it was forced out of him, and that’s such a bad sound that Sirius can’t even focus on the crap Snape is saying about him. Sirius’s stomach drops, because that’s, he’s pretty sure that means James is going to take a swing at Snape after all.

“James,” he starts, urgent, reaching out to try to catch James before he can.

Except James doesn’t punch Snape. He pulls out his wand and, without even speaking, sends a jet of vaguely familiar blueish light shooting at him. It illuminates the surprised expression on Snape’s face, in the half instant before it hits.

Sirius doesn’t wait around to find out which hex James used.

He brings his hand down hard around James’s wrist, wrenches his wand away with the other hand, and drags him straight out of the corridor and down the nearest three staircases. James doesn’t fight him.

“What the bloody _hell_ , James,” Sirius hisses, turning corners mostly at random. Being farther away might not _actually_ help keep them from getting in trouble for that, but it certainly can’t _hurt_.

“Sorry if you wanted to be the one to do that,” James says. Then, belatedly, snapping, “Oi, lemme go,” and he tries to shake out of Sirius’s grip like he’s only just noticed it.

Sirius doesn’t let go. “No, I mean it. What the fuck was that?”

“Like he didn’t have it coming.”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Except the _Head Boy_ can’t go around hexing people because they _have it coming_ ,” Sirius says. He pauses to give James a brief, hard stare. “You think you’re me now, or something?”

There’s a moment that feels frozen, James’s gaze locked with his—and the eyes behind those lenses are glassy and too wide, almost unfamiliar. Sirius’s stomach drops all over again.

“Shut up,” James says, voice gone quiet. He yanks at his hand, and this time Sirius lets him pull away. “Just, shut up, all right?”

“Sure, I could do that,” Sirius snaps. “If it means you’re going to tell me why you’re bloody hexing people out of nowhere.”

James’s gaze snaps to Sirius’s, alert suddenly, and _blazing_ with anger. “What, am I just supposed to let him say that kind of thing? To my face?” James says, voice dripping with venom.

“He didn’t say shit about you!”

It doesn’t make James look less furious. In fact, he might actually look _angrier_ now. “Snape doesn’t get to talk like that.”

“All Snape _does_ is talk like that,” Sirius says.

“So, what, you think I should let him get _away_ with it?”

“Well I don’t think you should go around hexing him.”

“He good as called you a _murderer_ , Sirius!”

For a second Sirius just stands there, his chest feeling hollowed out and raw. He isn’t an idiot. He knows as well as James seems to that even if Snape hadn’t actually called him that, he was sure doing his best to make it sound like Sirius had tried to become one.

It shouldn’t even _matter_ , though; Sirius hasn’t ever, he’s _not_ a killer. It’s just an ignorant, hateful thing to say, like everything that ever comes out of Snape’s mouth, and it shouldn’t bother him. Either of them. The only reason it should bother one of them was if they believed that Sirius could—

Except, no. The thought is stupid, and _wrong_ , and he’s not going to entertain it even for a second.

Sirius takes a deep breath, and it hurts a little. “Y’know, just because we’re getting married doesn’t mean you have to, I mean, to go around defending my honor or anything,” he says, because it’s the best he can come up with on short notice and he _has_ to say something, if he doesn’t speak he’s just going to be standing there feeling queasy, like he missed a step going down a flight of stairs.

James’s lips pull back from him teeth, but it’s not a smile. Actually, he looks a lot like Sirius imagines he must look, when he’s in dog form and thinking about _biting_ something.

“Yeah, sure,” James replies, words coming out like grinding a boulder into gravel. “Of course it doesn’t mean that. Why would I care what people say about my husband?”

Sirius has to swallow a lump in his throat that wasn’t there a second ago, and even then, it takes a couple tries, open his mouth with nothing coming out only to close it again, before he manages to say anything. There’s no other sound in the empty corridor, just James and his intent stare that feels like a weight on the back of Sirius’s neck, making him want to duck his head, to look away, but he can’t. He can’t speak and he can’t look away and James won’t stop looking at him.

“You. James, it isn’t. Uh, I didn’t,” Sirius says. It’s a mess, halting, and it doesn’t make any sense and he _knows_ it, but he’s trying.

James heaves the sharpest, most impatient sigh Sirius has ever heard. “Forget it,” he says. “I need to go see the Headmaster. If I hurry, I can probably make it before any of the teachers hear about this from Snape.”

It doesn’t matter that Sirius can’t think of anything to say to that, because James is already turning away.

#

James doesn’t show before dinner, or during.

“You’re very—jittery,” Remus says, eyeing Sirius sidelong.

“I am not,” Sirius snaps back.

Remus’s gaze drops to Sirius’s hand, resting on the table next to his plate. Sirius looks down, too. After a moment, he makes his fingers stop tapping against the surface.

“Oh, shut it.”

Because Sirius seems to be destined to have a really terrible day, and this is Remus, of course he does _not_ shut it. “Where’s James, anyway?” he asks.

“He went to see Dumbledore,” Sirius says, figuring that the truth’ll wind up coming out sooner or later anyway, and pretending he doesn’t know what’s up is just likely to make Remus suspicious. It never seems to work, anyway.

Remus’s eyebrows twitch, not quite rising, but definitely not staying still. “I didn’t know there was a Heads meeting scheduled.”

“There isn’t.”

“What’s he want with Professor Dumbledore, then?” Peter asks, leaning around Remus to frown at Sirius.

And there goes any hope of ending this conversation quickly. Two against one, with a legitimate question, and no James to back him up? Sirius won’t be able to weasel out of this without hexing, and there’s already been enough of _that_ for one day.

“He’s tattling on himself.”

“What?” There go Remus’s eyebrows, going up good and proper. “What did you two do?”

“ _I_ didn’t do anything,” Sirius says, indignant purely on reflex.

Remus looks sceptical. Peter makes a snorting sound, half a snicker, clearly taking Sirius’s words for a joke.

“I didn’t! Honest.”

“What happened, then?”

“Prongs might’ve possibly used magic in a corridor,” Sirius says, looking away from them. There’s a pause, both of the others keeping quiet while they wait for the incriminating part, since on a good day James and Sirius probably use magic in the corridor a good dozen times between them.

(Come on, sometimes you forget your book bag in the classroom, and don’t notice until you’re three floors away, and it’s _easier_ to summon it, all right? Especially if your fiancé is standing around laughing at you instead of being useful. It’s not Sirius’s fault.)

“Well?” Peter prompts, when Sirius must’ve taken too long to answer for his tastes, which pretty much everyone can agree are somewhat lacking on the attention span front.

Sirius groans, resigning himself to it. “He used it on Snape.”

“What, really?” Remus says, eyebrows staying up like little flags waving his interest to the rest of the great hall. “Are you sure?”

“I was _there_ , so, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“But, he knows better than that,” Peter says, face wrinkled in confusion.

“That could lose him Head Boy,” Remus adds, even though it’s _completely_ unnecessary, Sirius knows it all already. “That could get him _suspended_.”

“Apparently he doesn’t care about trivial little things like that,” Sirius says, “since he didn’t let any of it stop him.”

“ _Why_ , though?”

“Hell if I know, Moony. The _hell_ if I know.”

Sirius must look exceptionally frustrated about it, or else Remus and Peter are too stunned by this behavioural relapse to really push for details, because they let it go after that. Sirius is quiet for the rest of dinner, but that doesn’t mean he’s _sulking_. It doesn’t. He just doesn’t have anything to say to any of them, that’s all.

He sure as hell doesn’t have that problem an hour later, when James comes dragging his feet into the common room. It doesn’t help, the way James’s face flushes then closes off, when he spots Sirius, either. 

“Well?” Sirius says, keeping his impatience out of his tone through force of will alone. “What happened?”

“I lost fifty points and I got detention,” James says. “But I’m not expelled or anything.”

“Oh well in _that_ case.”

“Your sarcasm is really appreciated, Padfoot, thanks.”

“You know what’s not appreciated? You not telling me what’s going on.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’d say it matters a lot, actually.”

“Leave it, Sirius.”

“No way. You can’t just do what you did, and come back here saying nothing, and expect—”

“I said _leave_ it,” James snaps.

Sirius draws back, stung and not even trying to hide it. He presses lips together hard and doesn’t speak. He doesn’t like any of the things he thinks would come out of his mouth right now.

Eyes wide, James looks at him for a minute without saying anything, either. He grunts and drags both hands through his hair, knocking his glasses askew. He doesn’t bother to fix them.

“I’m gonna go shower,” he says, directing the words to the floor instead of Sirius. “We can talk about this later.”

“If you say so,” Sirius mutters, but he already knows they won’t.

#

James isn’t in Sirius’s bed when he wakes up the next morning, but there’s a dent in the pillow on his side, and the blankets are all untucked and rumpled the way they never get when it’s just Sirius sleeping alone. James’s own bed, when Sirius turns his head as fast as he can to check, is barely mussed at all. James himself is nowhere to be seen. It’s evidence Sirius couldn’t ignore even if he wanted to, which he sure doesn’t.

Sometime after Sirius fell asleep, James crawled in the other side of Sirius’s bed and spent most of the night there.

Sirius tries not to get his hopes up. It’s not like this means James is going to stop being weird, and start sleeping with Sirius like he’s _supposed_ to again. After all, it’s not like it _has_ to mean that, right?

#

It doesn’t.

#

“Did you see?” James asks, while they should be up in the Tower celebrating the Quidditch cup with the rest of Gryffindor, but aren’t, for reasons they’re not talking about—the same way they’re not talking about a lot of things.

“Like I told you the last dozen times you asked, of course I bleeding saw,” Sirius says, grin spread wide across his face despite his words. “That last goal you made just before Finch caught the snitch! It was a _beauty_. Damn.”

James beams. He doesn’t _quite_ throw his arm around Sirius’s shoulders, like he _ought_ to be doing, but he does clap a hand on Sirius’s far shoulder and leave it there for a bit, which is still more than he’s been doing lately. Sirius beams back, he can’t help it.

“I thought for sure that you were gonna fall right off your broom,” he says.

“It really was a good bit of flying, wasn’t it,” James says, smug as anything.

“It looked like you were gonna get yourself killed!”

Smugness not dented in the slightest, James says, “I know.”

Sirius curls his arm enough to get his hand in James’s hair, twist his fingers tight, and give James’s head a good hard shake. “Which I,” he reminds, because it looks like maybe James does actually need to hear it said, “would have minded, by the way.”

“Aw, come off it, Si, like I’d let myself die on a broom,” James says. He sounds a little annoyed, but he makes no effort whatsoever to get out of Sirius’s hold.

“Maybe not, but you _would_ absolutely _get_ yourself killed, doing something stupid on a—” Sirius starts, but has to abandon when they round a corner and he hears James’s name.

There are a pair of Ravenclaws a little farther up the corridor, only just in hearing range, paused in an alcove to talk. Both sixth years, if Sirius is remembering correctly. Neither of them seem to have taken any notice that they’re not quite in private any longer.

“… course they won, they’ve got bloody sodding Potter as a captain, don’t they,” the first Ravenclaw—Sirius thinks her name is Stewart, or something like that—is saying, and Sirius can only assume it must be in reference to the awarding of the Quidditch cup just an hour or so ago. A moment later he’s proven right.

“That doesn’t _guarantee_ them the cup,” points out the other one, and Sirius is pretty sure _her_ name is Willoughby, or else Willhouse. He might as well just call her _wrong_ , because of course having James on their team means they were a sure thing to take the cup.

Maybe-Stewart makes a noise like she agrees with Sirius on that point. Giving another little shake to the head still under his hand, Sirius shoots a smirk at James, who continues to look smug as all hell.

“You know it bloody does,” Maybe-Stewart says to Willoughby Or Else Willhouse, echoing Sirius’s thought all unknowing. “If it’s Quidditch and you’ve got Potter on the pitch then you’re going to win. It’s one of those rules of the universe, like—”

“Oh, seriously, this again?” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse groans.

Maybe-Stewart ignores her, saying, “—like Potter and Black going to any lengths to mess with people.”

Sirius freezes. Under his hands, he feels James stiffen.

“I told you, my cousin works at the Prophet, and he swears that announcement was legitimate,” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse says. “It came from their parents and everything.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means it’s legal,” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse points out.

“Like I said, _any lengths_ to mess with people,” Maybe-Stewart says, voice rich with self-satisfaction. As if her argument was a good one, instead of so weak it was abysmal.

“Or, they could just both be in love with each other.”

“Oh, get real. Who’s going to love _Black_? His family are all Dark Wizards and pureblood fanatics.”

“Potter’s family is not much better,” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse says.

“Yeah, but Black’ll do anything he says regardless, so that doesn’t matter—and anyway, Potter’s so full of himself I bet he doesn’t have room in his smug little heart for anyone else,” Maybe-Stewart says, waving a dismissive hand, and just like that, Sirius’s smirk falls away like it was never there to begin with.

“I don’t know,” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse says. She sounds uncertain. “He’s always seemed _really_ fond of Black.”

Maybe-Stewart scoffs, “Yeah, and have you seen the way Black fawns? Everybody knows he’s been gone on Potter since we were third years at least.”

And, okay, she’s only saying what Sirius and James have been doing their best to convince everyone is the truth, or anyway a really extreme version of the conclusions they want people drawing. Just that there’s— _something_ about the way she says it, like it’s not just what she believes. Like it’s the truth.

And, shit, it kind of is.

Their voices fade out of Sirius’s ears, along with everything else—his mind’s eye is one long stretch of every time he’s ever put James before everything else, every time he’s thought of James before himself. There are a lot of them, way more than Sirius had ever noticed, and it burns to think he’s been paying so little attention.

Worse than that, though, is the icy horrible rush as he faces what he hadn’t let himself see in his own heart before. It’s been there a while, settled like it belongs there, twisted up with everything that makes him _Sirius_ , permanent—and he’s just been ignoring it, never looking at it more than sidelong, pretending he wasn’t even aware it existed.

Bloody fuck.

And Sirius thinks _James_ is dense.

Lungs suddenly not working, feeling like lead in his chest, Sirius lets his arms drop away from James, who has yet to move. He’s so rigid that it’s very nearly painful for _Sirius_ , just standing at his side. Sirius would step away from him, maybe, if he could remember how to make his feet move. He might even just _leave_. He’s heard enough—more than. He doesn’t want to hear any more.

But of course Maybe-Stewart is still talking, damn her. “Of course Potter’s gonna like having that around,” she says. “Wouldn’t you want devotion like that following you everywhere?”

“I don’t know,” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse repeats.

“What, you still don’t think the whole romance thing is total bollocks?”

“Well,” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse says. She huffs, and Sirius imagines she’s shrugging. “No, I don’t.”

“How can you _not_ see that it’s all rubbish?”

“There’s the way Black always looks after Potter kisses him, for one,” she says.

Sirius smothers a wince. He doesn’t look over at James, doesn’t want to know what his face looks like—doesn’t want to find out what _his_ face might reveal to _James_.

“I just _said_ Black is always fawning over—”

“It’s _really_ not what I would call fawning,” Willoughby Or Else Willhouse snaps, like her patience with Maybe-Stewart is just plain wearing out. “Black looks at Potter like he’s his whole bloody world, and he wouldn’t change it even if he could.”

“Well that’s a load and a half of tripe,” Maybe-Stewart says. “And I don’t hear any proof about Potter.”

“Wanda, he _puts up with Black_.”

“Right,” James mutters, in a rush, and suddenly his hand is on Sirius’s upper arm, bruising tight, and he’s yanking Sirius away, back around the corner.

Sirius is kind of grateful. He doesn’t think he’d have liked to hear whatever came after that.

#

“What’s with you?” Remus asks, pausing next to where Sirius is slumped against a banister in the Great Hall while he waits for James to show up for the leaving feast.

Sirius had _meant_ to wait in the dorm, but James had started _twitching_ after Sirius had finished getting dressed and was just watching, so he’d given up and trudged down here. Alone. He grunts. “Waiting for James,” he says.

“Uh huh.” Remus looks thoughtful for a moment, like he’s debating with himself over something, and then he says, “If I ask what’s wrong, are you gonna try to tell me that there’s nothing, and you’re not fighting?”

And that’s. Well. The thing is, they aren’t, are they. Sirius has no clue what’s going on in James’s mind, but _he_ isn’t _mad_ or anything at James. Not even for not having realised that Sirius was in love with him; _Sirius_ only worked it out recently, and usually James is solidly slower on the uptake about these sorts of things. Hell, a lot of times James still needs Sirius to explain them to him.

But some part of Sirius still feels like James should’ve _known_.

They’re best mates, after all, even aside from the whole engaged thing, and isn’t part of being somebody’s best friend knowing who your friend fancies?

James is slacking _so hard_ right now. And he doesn’t even seem to realise.

So Sirius says, “We’re _not_ fighting,” which is technically true, even though it doesn’t feel it.

Remus sighs. Sirius gets the impression that he’s _disappointed_ him.

“It’s not _nothing_ ,” Sirius allows, “but we really aren’t fighting.”

Remus frowns, and his eyebrows tick up just a tiny bit. “Any chance that’s the problem?”

“What, are you saying you think I _ought_ to fight with him?” Sirius says. He can feel his face starting to fold into a scowl. “What the hell, Remus.”

“I just meant, you’ve been walking on eggshells around him lately,” Remus says, “but it’s important to actually discuss things when they come up instead of letting them fester.”

“ _Eggshells_?”

“I hear it can be hard to do, especially when you really care about a person,” Remus adds, ignoring Sirius’s sputter.

“When you what,” Sirius blurts, unable to stifle his knee-jerk horror that he’s been that transparent. Then, remembering the front they’ve been trying to project, he starts to say, “I mean, of course we—But—” only to draw up short.

Remus is just staring at him.

Sirius fidgets, and resists the urge to look away. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing. Just. You _are_ aware that you’re in love with him, right?” Remus says, like if Sirius doesn’t answer correctly Remus is going to take away his grown-up card. Even though he is _younger than Sirius is_ , and he’s never been engaged or dated anyone or anything.

Sirius grinds his teeth. He doesn’t say anything, because anything he _could_ say without lying would make it obvious just how long he _hasn’t_ been aware of that. He has no intention of giving Remus that kind of dirt. He _could_ just go ahead and lie, but he’s been doing so much of that lately, or _thinking_ he has been, that he’d—really rather not do any more of it.

Remus takes Sirius’s silence for the agreement it was meant to be, and he snorts. “Well, at least you’re not _completely_ hopeless, then.”

“Oh, shove off,” Sirius says, “And don’t act like it’s a good thing.”

“Why not?” Remus asks, eyebrows going up, looking genuinely puzzled.

“Because it isn’t!”

“You love the boy you’re going to marry,” Remus says. He’s speaking in that flat, slow way he does some times when Sirius or James do… things. “Most of the time that makes people _happy_.”

“Yes, well, most of the time, those people aren’t being _forced_ to get married,” Sirius snaps.

“You— _What_?” Remus blurts, and then he just stares at Sirius, like he thinks Sirius is speaking Parseltongue or Mermish or something, or maybe just like he’s never seen Sirius before. It’s really rich, coming from a werewolf.

“We _had_ to, is what I’m saying,” Sirius says.

Remus keeps on looking gobsmacked. “But why?”

“His parents were trying to marry him off to my cousin.”

“But that’s, it’s ridiculous,” Remus says.

“I know, right? That’s what I said!” Sirius replies, throwing his arms in the air to illustrate just how great an annoyance that is, because if even _Remus_ can see it after less than a minute, surely James’s parents should’ve been able to work it out.

“So, then how, I don’t understand, how does that lead to him having to _marry you_?”

“Well, I couldn’t let _Bellatrix_ have him. It was the best solution,” Sirius says.

“Actually marrying him yourself was a better solution than just stopping it?”

“Stopping it wasn’t an option, so yes,” Sirius explains. “And James _agreed_ , so there.”

“You’re both mad,” Remus says, staring. “That’s the only explanation. You’re completely insane.”

“No, we aren’t, it’s his _parents_ ,” Sirius says. There are people who can be blamed for this, sure, but not a single one of those people is _Sirius_. He shakes his head.

“Yeah, because they’re the only ones behaving inexplicably in this scenario,” Remus mutters.

“Uh, yeah.”

“You know, I’m still not seeing the problem. Why isn’t this a good thing, again?”

“Well, obviously,” Sirius says, severe and a bit annoyed. “James _doesn’t feel that way_ about me.”

Remus doesn’t say anything for a very long time. “Right,” he announces, his tone that of someone giving up. “I’m going to the feast. You—carry on.”

#

Two hours later, Sirius is starting to suspect that he might’ve accidentally lied to Remus.

Oh, not about his feelings being unrequited; nothing in a good way. It’s just that, actually, he’s pretty sure he and James are fighting, after all.

“What is _the matter_ with you?”

“What are you talking about,” James says, evasive as all hell, looking anywhere but at Sirius, as Sirius slams into the dorm after him.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe how you wouldn’t sit next to me at the feast?” Sirius says, and he does his best to make it sound exactly as irritated as he’s feeling. “Or the way you flinched every time I looked at you.”

“I did not,” James says, flinching.

“Yes, you did, and you just did it again!”

“I had a—a twitch. It wasn’t a flinch.”

“I’m not a bloody idiot, James. It was _so_.”

“Well, so, and if I _was_ flinching,” James snaps, whirling on him, and Sirius is really starting to hate the sound of that word, even without the venom James is starting to drip, “it’s not like I wouldn’t have _cause_ , or anything.”

Sirius—doesn’t get it. He tries, but just comes up blank, clueless and even angrier for it. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, like you can’t work it out?”

“‘Work it out’, what, you mean based on you _acting like a loon_ , no I can’t bloody work it out,” Sirius says. He considers shoving James, but props his fists on his hips instead.

James’s lips curl. “Well there’s a surprise.”

“What is _wrong_ with you? Why can’t you just tell me what the hell you meant?”

“I _meant_ how you said you’d get me out of my parents’ stupid wedding plans, but instead you got _yourself_ engaged to me!”

“Well it’s not like I _wanted_ to,” Sirius yells, without considering, before he can think better of it—before James’s words really have time to even sink in.

The thing is, it’s a _lie_ , Sirius knows that now, and it should be an _obvious_ one, he’s not even _trying_ to be convincing, but James—

He doesn’t look like he can tell.

James scowls harder, and crosses his arms over his chest. His hands, tucked up between his elbows and his ribs, are in fists. Sirius can see his white knuckles from all the way across the room.

“Yeah, well,” James says, and his voice is cold, cold, _cold_. Just listening to it gives Sirius the shivers. “I’m starting to wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off with your cousin.”

Sirius lurches backwards like he’s been hexed, before he can stop himself, and gapes at James.

“That is so out of line,” he says, low.

James gives a tight, uncomfortable looking shrug. It’s worlds away from apologetic. “At least I _expect_ mutual dislike from _her_.”

Fuck, but Sirius would’ve preferred the hex.

“Well, sorry you’re stuck with me instead,” he bites out, the words acid on his tongue, as he struggles to keep breathing.

“Yeah, lotta good that does me, huh,” James says.

Now Sirius _is_ mad, one hundred percent definitely mad and not hurt at all, because suddenly he has a solid, definite excuse for anger. You don’t go around telling a bloke that you’d rather be marrying his creepy, obnoxious, older dark witch of a cousin than marrying _him_ , when he’s _supposed_ to be your favourite person on the planet, you just don’t. And if you _do_ , which you’re _not supposed to_ , then he is absolutely supposed to be _furious_ with you.

“Oh, right, I apologise. What was I _thinking_ , trying to save you from a loveless marriage to a _total creeper_ ,” Sirius snaps, not even sorry that there’s fire in his voice that even he can hear.

James’s eyebrows head for his hairline. “You managed to stop the total creeper part, anyway, didn’t you.”

And, all right, _look_. Sirius hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks, not since James stopped crawling into bed with him, and he’s been going without the usual, casual, proprietary touches of his _favourite person_ for just as long, never mind that he’s in love with James now and everything. He doesn’t have the energy—the _patience_ —to put up with this.

“Sorry I couldn’t remove myself from the picture entirely for you,” he says, low.

And now _James_ looks like he’s just got hit with a hex, and that isn’t even _fair_.

“Whatever,” Sirius snaps, not giving James a chance to recover, heading for the door even though it means pushing past James. “I’m going for a walk.”

James doesn’t stop him, or try to get him to take the Invisibility Cloak so he doesn’t get caught, but then, James doesn’t move at all.

#

They don’t talk as they’re packing up the last few of their things the next morning, and it’s not just James’s fault. Sirius doesn’t try to start a conversation, either.

Even when he finds the Invisibility Cloak, shoved down between his cauldron and a potions book he’s never going to look at again, the lone possession of James’s in a trunk full of his things, Sirius doesn’t say anything.

In fact, neither of them says to each other anything it all, not all through breakfast, or the horseless carriage ride to the train. It’s not until they’re piling into a compartment with Remus and Peter that James speaks, and that’s to say, “Oi, move it, Peter, I fancy the other window seat this time.”

Peter doesn’t move for a second, all of them gaping at James, and then he scurries up out of the seat next to Remus and drops into the one beside Sirius.

James sits down, calm as you please, in the seat across from Sirius’s.

Sirius bites the inside of his cheek, and looks away, out the window. He doesn’t turn his head back, not even when the train lurches into motion.

The silence stretches out again. From the corner of his eye, Sirius can see Peter staring back and forth between him and James, and Remus carefully _not_ looking at either of them.

It’s the quietest train ride Sirius can remember, ever.

“Well,” Remus says, as the train is lurching into King’s Cross. He sounds truly, deeply uncomfortable. “I’ll see you, I guess?”

“Yeah,” says Sirius.

“For the wedding, if not sooner?” Remus adds, glancing between them.

“Yeah,” James says, while Sirius fights not to cringe.

“Right, then. Goodbye, lads,” Remus says, with a sigh, and steps out of the compartment.

“Yeah, what he said. Bye, lads,” Peter echoes, following him out with haste that would be insulting, if Sirius could make himself care.

James darts half a look at Sirius, who isn’t going to be the first to say anything, he’s _not_. This isn’t all on him. James stands up, wand out to magic his trunk down, and takes two steps toward the door. Sirius isn’t going to—

“James, wait,” Sirius hears himself saying.

James pauses, just inside the train compartment.

He doesn’t say anything, but he does turn to face Sirius, and looks at him expectantly. He’s not hexing, or running screaming, or telling Sirius not to bother because there’s nothing James wants to hear from him, or any of the other worst case scenarios Sirius was dreading. Which, well, Sirius isn’t exactly _happy_ about this, but he’ll definitely take James not treating him like he’s worse than Snape.

Sirius takes a deep breath. “Look,” he says. “I’m, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” James says, his voice heavy. Really, alarmingly heavy. “I’m sorry too.”

And just like that he’s gone, after all.

#

“Finally.”

Sirius lifts his head from where he’s got it slumped on one of the tables in the parlour, and gives Mum a wary look, because that tone has boded well for him precisely _never_ in the past.

“Finally, what?” he asks.

“You’re home, we can finish the rest of the preparations.” She pauses, and pulls a disdainful face. “It was— _insisted_ , that you and James be involved in choosing some of the details of the ceremony.”

Sirius’s stomach swoops like it’s James on a broomstick at the Quidditch final back at Hogwarts. He swallows. “Who insisted,” he asks. It couldn’t have been James. Could it? Does he care enough to—Did he—

“James’s parents, of course,” Mum says.

“Right.” Sirius takes a moment to shake off the stab of disappointment—it was stupid to feel it, anyway. What was he _thinking_? “Do I have to? Can’t I just, like, look at the guest list and pretend I helped with the rest?”

“You realise of course that the guest have already been sent their invitations.”

“Perfect,” Sirius says, “so I won’t have to do _anything_.”

Mum’s mouth pinches tight. “All right. I’ll show you the guest list.”

“Excellent.”

“Provided,” Mum goes on, “you help with the rest of these details.”

“Aw, hell.”

#

“Well?”

“What?” Mum snaps, most of the way to annoyed enough that Sirius needs to start keeping an eye out for her wand making an appearance.

He doesn’t know where she gets off being annoyed with him. She’s the one who insisted on asking him a lot of stupid questions about unimportant things, like whether he wanted to stand on the bride’s side or the groom’s side—

“For Godric’s sake, Mum, they’re _both_ the grooms’ side, it _doesn’t matter_!”

—or if he has a _colour palette preference_ , which is maybe the most useless thing ever asked about anything. (“Are our robes staying black? Good. Then I _don’t care_.”)

And now here Mum is, looking at Sirius like _she’s_ tired of putting up with _him_.

Sirius grits his teeth. He narrows his eyes at Mum, incase she’s got any ideas about being difficult. “You said you’d show me the guest list, if I did all the other things.”

Mum hesitates for a moment, then pulls a roll of parchment out of her desk. “This is for our side of things,” she says, passing it to him.

“Oi,” Sirius says, after a minute, reading it over. “Andromeda’s not on this.”

Mum’s spine draws up painfully straight. “I’m well aware,” she snaps.

“Why isn’t she?” Sirius asks.

“You know very well why.” Mum sniffs. “As if we would be inviting that blood traitor to an event such as this.”

“Oh, we _will_ be,” Sirius says, shoving away the roll of parchment with the list of guests on it. “If I have to go over there and invite her personally.”

“Absolutely not,” Mum says, a disdainful curl to her mouth.

“It’s _my_ wedding,” Sirius tries. “And I want her there.”

“We and the Potters are paying for it, and _we’ll_ not have the likes of her.”

“She’s my cousin!”

“Not any more,” Mum says.

“Whatever. She’s _coming_ ,” Sirius says, as firmly as he can.

“She is _not_ ,” Mum snaps. And, when Sirius is about to say something more, “That is _final_ , Sirius.”

Sirius snorts. They’d just see about _that_.

#

The next night is one of Mum and Dad’s lame, ‘look at us the almighty Blacks’ parties, where all his horrid relatives stand around congratulating each other on how stuffy and awful they are.

This one wouldn’t be any worse than usual, except Sirius keeps catching himself thinking how much nicer they’ll be once he gets to have James with him—and then remembering that maybe James won’t want to come to these with him, since they won’t be _real_ husbands, and James doesn’t like him.

It’s halfway through the night, and Sirius is just staring morosely into his drink and wondering for the half dozenth time just how hard it would be to get Kreacher to spike it for him, when Uncle Alphard draws him aside. “Listen, m’boy,” he starts. He pauses to chew his moustache.

Sirius doesn’t point out that he was already listening, because Uncle Alphard looks extremely grave, and kind of angry when he glances at Mum, so now is probably not the best time to be irritating him. “Yes, Uncle Alphard?” he says, instead.

“Listen,” Uncle Alphard repeats. “Now, I know this whole marriage business was probably my wretched sister’s idea—No, don’t argue,” he snaps.

Sirius—who’d been about to explain that actually, him being one of the grooms had been entirely his own idea—closes his mouth and does his best to look meek and attentive. It’s not his best job.

Whatever, Uncle Alphard doesn’t seem to notice, because he goes on, “No doubt she’s pushing the whole absurd thing, and I’m sure it feels like she’s got you backed into a corner with no choice in the matter at all. Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sirius says, and it’s not even a tiny bit of a lie.

If he could come up with a way to end this engagement without throwing James back into his parents’ sights, he would do it _this instant_.

“That’s what I thought,” Uncle Alphard says. He nods to himself, and chews his moustache another moment. “Now, listen, m’boy—”

And, honestly, Uncle Alphard must think Sirius has wax for ears, because that’s _the third time_ he’s said that. “I _am_ ,” Sirius says, he can’t hold it in anymore. It’s a stupid thing to do, though, and he knows it.

Uncle Alphard’s impeccably groomed eyebrows do some ominous shifting around. Sirius shuts his mouth.

“Don’t tell my fool sister about it,” Uncle Alphard says, speaking quick and sharp now, not at all like his rambling genial tone from a second ago. “I’ve left you something with the house elves, they’ll have put it in your room by now.”

“What is it?” Sirius asks, feet itching to go upstairs straight away and find out. Curiosity is the _worst_ , the bloody cats can keep it.

“You’ll see. Use it or don’t, but don’t let her know you’ve got it. Or where it came from.”

“Right,” Sirius says. “Uh, thanks?”

Uncle Alphard snorts. “Well, I’ve done what I can about this farce, anyway. You might as well thank me.”

Sirius considers pointing out that he just _did_ thank him, but he’s already made Uncle Alphard drop the slightly bumbling attitude that is his usual facade, and the next step after that on the irritation scale is pulling out his wand, which Sirius doesn’t want to see _ever_ , much less _cause_ , so. Instead, Sirius says, “Yes, Uncle Alphard.”

Again, Uncle Alphard snorts. This time, he shakes his head, too, and turns away.

“I need a bleeding drink,” Sirius hears him mutter, and then Uncle Alphard has disappeared into the crowd of politely chatting purebloods.

#

Gold.

It’s gold, a sack of galleons, more than Sirius has seen all in one place outside of a Gringotts vault.

Sirius stares at it. He stares for what would probably be long enough to embarrassing him if there were anyone to see him, but he’s alone so it’s all right.

But— _Gold_. Why in Merlin’s name would Uncle Alphard think to give Sirius gold, and just how exactly does he think this is going to help Sirius?

Baffled, Sirius grabs the sack of galleons and stashes it in his school trunk, until he can figure out what to do with it.

#

“Do you need to keep doing that horrible thing with your face,” Regulus asks, a couple afternoons later when they both happen to be in the library at the same time, “or are you just enjoying yourself?”

“What horrible thing?” Sirius asks, without really paying attention.

“The one you’re doing right now, with the long puppy eyes and the sadness.”

“I do not have long puppy eyes.” He pauses. “ _Or_ sadness.”

Regulus throws a little book on disciplining house elves at Sirius’s head. It hits him in the face.

“Oi!”

“You’re a liar and a mope,” Regulus says. “It’s annoying. You should stop.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Sirius mutters, feeling so sullen that even _he_ finds it kind of annoying.

“And just why isn’t it easy for _you_ to _do_?”

“Because of this wedding. Because I’m making James _marry me_.”

“Wait,” Regulus says, after a moment where he mostly just gives Sirius a blank stare. “Is that a problem now, or something?”

It is a huge problem, it’s the biggest problem Sirius thinks he’s ever dealt with before, and he _doesn’t know what to do_. It’s horrible. It’s worse than horrible. This morning he couldn’t even eat breakfast because the eggs were done the way James likes them. Last night he actually _thought about crying_. Into his _pillow_. He’s losing his mind and there’s nobody for him to tell about it.

“Yes!” Sirius says, because Regulus isn’t anybody, but he’s better than _nobody_.

Regulus does not look impressed to have got an honest answer. He looks downright _unimpressed_ , actually. “How can it possibly be—”

“Because _I’m in love with him_ ,” Sirius announces, and it’s not wailing dramatically if nobody calls you on it.

“Yes,” Regulus says, “I know?”

“And he _doesn’t love me_ ,” Sirius adds.

There’s a long pause. Regulus clears his throat. “Did he say that?”

“Of course he didn’t say that, James doesn’t _say things_ ,” Sirius says, batting Regulus’s question away.

“Then how do you—”

“Reg, I don’t know how to fix this!”

Regulus looks confused. “Do you—need to?” he asks.

“Don’t be daft, of course I need to.”

“Who’s asking you to?”

Sirius scowls at him, and doesn’t dignify that with an answer. It’s _obvious_.

“No, really,” Regulus says, annoyingly insistent the way he does best. “Who says you have to fix this?”

Maybe not as obvious as all that, then—or maybe Regulus is just being dim intentionally. It’s _Regulus_ , so it could really go either way. “How can you even say that?” Sirius asks.

“You still get to marry him, don’t you?”

“Oh, so you don’t think it might be _slightly_ untenable to be in love with your spouse when they don’t love you back?” Sirius asks, voice as acidic as he can make it.

Regulus rolls his eyes. “He’s going to be _your husband_ , I don’t see how there’s a better outcome for you.”

“There’s a better outcome for _him_.”

“What, than marrying someone who’s mad for him? I really don’t see how.”

“I just told you how!”

“Look,” Regulus says, starting to look genuinely and sincerely annoyed. “Sirius. Has he tried to break off the engagement?”

“No, not that I know of,” Sirius says.

“Well, then, there you go.”

Sirius stares at him, but Regulus doesn’t offer anything else. He just stares back at Sirius, looking expectant.

“There I go, _what_?” Sirius demands.

“There you go, he must want to marry you, as well.”

“How in Merlin’s name do you reckon _that_?”

“The two of you were an embarrassing pain in the arse the whole time he was supposed to be engaged to Bellatrix,” Regulus says, visibly losing anything resembling patience with Sirius, which is really rich, coming from someone who can’t see the problem even though Sirius literally just laid it out for him. Especially since Reg was the one who started the conversation in the first place. “I’m pretty sure there’d’ve been a lot more fuss by now if he wanted out of marrying _you_.”

Sirius scrubs his hands over his face. “ _Why_ do I talk to you?”

“Feel free to stop,” Regulus says, brightly. “Really. Anytime.”

#

The next time neither of his parents are looking, Sirius sneaks out of the house, across Grimmauld Place, and down the street to the nearest muggle pay-fellytone. He calls the only reasonable relative he seems to have left.

“Hello?” Andromeda says, when she picks up.

“Andi, it’s me,” he says.

“Sirius, hey. How are you?”

“I’m, I’ve been better. Mum’s making a big deal about me getting married.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Congratulations, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Sirius says, conditioned to respond that way after months of hearing it. “That’s actually the reason I’m calling. Well, one of the two reasons.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. I found out you didn’t get sent an invitation. I’m really sorry. I wanted you to, but Mum refused.”

“You’re really—Listen, nitwit,” Andromeda says, and Sirius can hear the exasperation in her sigh even over the fellytone. “Did it occur to you at any point that maybe I don’t _want_ to come?”

Sirius’s chest kind of hurts. It’s been doing that a lot recently and he really wishes it would _never_. “I thought, uh. I mean. No,” he admits, and his voice comes out smaller than he means it to.

“Even if the family would let me, I’m not really in a hurry to spend time with them. Ever again,” she says.

“Right, of course not,” Sirius says.

“Besides, bringing a small child to an event the likes of which your bloody parents are likely to throw just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.”

“I suppose.” Sirius clears his throat. “How _is_ little Nymphadora?” he says, trying for cheerful.

There’s a long moment of silence from the other end of the phone. Then Andromeda sighs again, which probably means he missed cheerful by about a mile. “Look,” she says, more gently. “Don’t get me wrong, I love you. You should bring James for a visit, after the wedding. But I wouldn’t come even if Walburga had let you invite me.”

“I guess, I suppose I don’t blame you for that,” Sirius says, because he does but it is only a little, and anyway he can see why she wouldn’t want to. _He_ doesn’t want to be there, he really shouldn’t hold it against people for taking advantage of the fact that they don’t have show up.

“So, anyway,” Andromeda says, and it sounds to Sirius like maybe she’s clearing her throat. “What was the other reason?”

“Huh?”

“You said you were calling for two reasons?”

“Ah, right, yeah. The other was, well.” Sirius stops, trying to think how to put the problem. He feels like all his words have deserted him.

“Just spit it out.”

Sirius takes a breath, and does. “It’s James,” he blurts. “He’s been odd ever since Mum and Dad and the Potters arranged this wedding—But he’s _especially_ since I worked out that I, well—”

“Wait, what are you saying?” Andromeda interrupts. “What do you mean, arranged? Are you saying that your parents and the Potters are behind this?”

“They are,” Sirius says. “Mostly James’s parents, honestly. Apparently he talked about the muggleborn Head Girl too much last summer and they got nervous.”

“Then this _isn’t_ your and James’s idea?”

Mind blanking out, Sirius stares at the rotary dial of the fellytone, since he can’t stare at Andromeda’s face, trying to figure what on _earth_ she could be going on about. “What? No way.”

There’s silence over the line for long enough that Sirius half-suspects that she’s hung up on him.

“Oh,” she finally says.

“What the hell does that mean, ‘oh’,” Sirius demands.

“Well, when I saw the announcement over New Year’s, I just sort of assumed.”

“Assumed _what_?”

“That you’d insisted on this whole thing,” Andromeda says, her tone suggesting she thinks that should’ve been _obvious_. “Or else maybe James, but really you’ve always seemed more likely to be the one actually getting around to pushing for it.”

“You thought this was our idea?” Sirius yelps.

“Well,” she says, like a verbal shrug, “yeah.”

“What _the bloody hell_ , Andi!”

“Oh come on, it’s not like it’s a huge leap, or anything.”

“It is so!” Sirius pauses, takes a couple of deep breaths to get himself back under control. “We weren’t together.”

Andromeda snorts.

“We’re not even together _now_ ,” Sirius adds, ignoring how much that truth stings.

“Oh, please.”

“We’re not!”

“That is the most ridiculous load of malarkey I’ve ever—”

“We _aren’t_ ,” Sirius says, half a yell, and then, completely without his own permission, “I think he _hates me_.”

Once he realises he’s said it, he sort of expects for there to be another long, long silence. There isn’t.

“Oh, _please_ ,” Andromeda says again, right away. “James Potter wouldn’t hate you if you smashed his broom to pieces in front of him and set it on fire.”

Sirius splutters. “He would _so_ —That’s the dimmest thing, I would never—”

“You could have him thrown in Azkaban, and he’d come busting right back out just to yell at the first person who said something unkind to you about it.”

“Now you’re just being absurd,” Sirius says, huffing.

“I’m really not. I mean it, Sirius,” she says, slipping into the voice that’s always been meant to remind him that she’s six years older than he is. “The James I know would cast an Unforgivable on himself if only you explained he needed to.”

“Yeah, well, he hasn’t been acting like it,” Sirius snaps. Then, as the thought really sinks in, and sends creeping chills down his spine, “And I’d _never_ let anyone cast an Unforgivable on him, are you off your head?”

“Well, how’s he been acting, then?”

“Like he hates me.”

Andromeda huffs, crinkly static in Sirius’s ear through the fellytone. “Have you tried talking to him about it?”

“James is allergic to talking about things,” Sirius tells her.

“Maybe you should try anyway,” she says. “I really think—” There’s a loud noise from her end of the line, like a muffled crash. A moment later, sounding distracted, her voice comes back. “Listen, I’ve got to go. You have a nice wedding, give my love to your brother, and bring your husband around to see me sometime this summer, all right?”

“Yeah,” Sirius says, feeling heavy. “I’ll do that.”

#

Sirius can’t get Andromeda’s voice out of his head the whole next week.

“And you’ll need a haircut, then,” Dad says, while Sirius is having his robes fitted for the final time. He gives Sirius’s head a critical look, and Sirius hears, _have you tried talking to him_.

“Be _still_ , you infernal beast,” Mum says, pointing her wand at Sirius’s hair and trying not to take his ear off.

 _You should try anyway_.

“Don’t drown in your soup,” Mum says at dinner. “You’ll not embarrass me by dying _now_.”

 _You should try_.

“You’re not _my_ sad puppy, stop moping at me,” Regulus snaps, after Sirius follows him into a third room in a row.

 _Talk to James_.

“It wouldn’t hurt either of you to _pay attention_ every now and then,” James’s mum hisses, while Sirius is busy staring down at his hand, curled stiffly in James’s on the cushion between them, during the reception after the rehearsal.

 _James would cast an Unforgivable on himself if you said he needed to_.

Waving goodbye to the Potters and watching them Apparate home the night before the wedding, Sirius finally makes up his mind. He can’t put off dealing with this until after the ceremony, because depending what the problem actually is, that might be too late—really, genuinely _too late_ —to fix.

Sirius knows what he has to do.

#

When Sirius escapes his mother’s fussing clutches the next morning and opens the door to the room where James is dressing, James has his back turned, and Remus is nowhere to be seen. Regulus is there, though, which explains how he’d been avoiding fulfilling his duties as best man, even though it doesn’t explain why. He’s facing the door, and when he catches sight of Sirius his eyes go wide. He stares.

Making a curious noise, James turns around, and freezes.

“Sirius,” he says, on an exhale. His eyes are even wider than Regulus’s.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Regulus blurts.

Sirius doesn’t look at him. He’s not actually sure he could take his eyes off James if he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to.

“Get out,” he says.

“But—”

“ _Get out_ ,” says James.

Regulus makes an uncertain noise, but after a second, he goes.

The door clicks shut, and they’re alone together for the first time in almost a month. It shouldn’t feel as weird as it does, Sirius knows that. It’s never mattered before, how long they were apart—all that ever mattered was that they were with each other.

“So,” says James.

“Yeah. So,” says Sirius.

The wedding starts in an hour.

It’s almost funny, that they’re standing here with nothing to say, when a year ago the idea of an awkward silence between them would’ve had them both laughing their arses off.

James bites his lip. Sirius swallows and looks away—only for his eyes to dart right back in. It’s like his eyes are magnetised to James, even though looking at him _hurts_ , and yet Sirius doesn’t even want to stop himself.

 _This is the worst_ , he can’t help thinking, trying to figure out how to start what he knows he needs to say. The sack in his hand is heavier even than gold should be making it. _I hate this_.

Then suddenly, James is dragging his hands one after the other through his hair, completely wrecking the style someone else must have magicked it into, and saying, “Why are you doing this, Sirius?”

“Doing what?” Sirius asks, immediately afraid that James means being here, right now, trying to _talk_ to him. James _never_ wants to talk, everyone knows that—but if James doesn’t even want to be near him, then. Well. There’s no way Sirius is going to get through—

“ _This_. With me. The wedding.”

There’s an unpleasant swooping sensation in Sirius’s stomach. That, that skips about a half a dozen points on his mental list of things they need to discuss. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies, on frantic instinct.

“Come on,” says James, and he’s starting to get the wrinkle between his brows that means he’s fighting off a scowl. “We’re getting married in a matter of _minutes_. It’s not like your reasons really matter at this point.”

“If they don’t matter, why are you asking?” says Sirius, stung, trying to ignore that James has a really bloody good point, and it’s the _whole reason_ he’s come in here to begin with.

“Because I want to know,” says James. He crosses his arms. “Come on, Sirius. For me.”

The air in Sirius’s lungs tries to get stuck there. He forces himself to take a deep breath. “What if they _do_ matter?”

“All the more reason to tell me.”

Sirius grits his teeth. After a second, he says, “There was other stuff I was gonna say first, but—Look. I would have tried to help you get out of a marriage you didn’t want, anyway, no matter who it was to, because you’re my best mate, and I want you to be happy.”

“I know _that_ ,” says James, impatiently.

“But I would do _anything_ ,” Sirius continues, heart pounding like he’s _panicking_ , halfway to just dropping the stupid sack and running out of the room, “to keep you from marrying Bellatrix.”

“Of course,” James starts, mouth open to say more.

Sirius doesn’t give him the chance. He doesn’t know that he’ll be able to say what he needs to, if James starts being all _understanding_ all of a sudden. James doesn’t act considerate, he just doesn’t, Sirius wouldn’t be able to take it if he started now. “It turns out I didn’t want you marrying anyone, especially if you didn’t want to, but, James,” gulping in air and hardly believing that he’s really saying this, “I _hated_ the idea of you marrying a Black.” 

James’s face sort of crumples in on itself, while still looking like he’s trying to be stoic or some shite. “I don’t underst—”

“A Black who wasn’t me,” Sirius clarifies, fast, like stepping in front of a curse aimed at the person he loves most. No time to think about it, to consider, have to just _do_ it. And of course, _of course_ , that person is James. It could never have been anyone else.

James’s mouth snaps closed.

Sirius is kind of afraid he’s gonna be sick all over the floor. He keeps talking, because maybe that’ll keep his breakfast down. “I didn’t know why it mattered to me so much, at first. And I didn’t really have time to think about it, we were so busy trying to get you out of it.”

“But,” James says, and then it seems like he has to stop to swallow. Sirius can see his throat working. “But you know now?”

Sirius nods, not taking his eyes away from James’s face.

“It took me a while. We saved you from Bellatrix, and then it was—me, and.” Sirius pauses, to clear his throat. “I was _happy_. You were still trapped and I was, I think I was _proud of myself_.”

“So, so what does that, what do you…” James trails off. He’s staring at Sirius, his eyes huge. He looks _lost_ , is what he looks, and Sirius will never like that expression on his face but he more than usually hates it right now.

Sirius’s palms are sweating. He tightens his grip on the bag he’s carrying and steels himself. In his most level voice, he confesses,

“I _want_ to marry you, James.”

James’s adam’s apple bobs on another swallow and this time Sirius could swear he _hears_ it.

“I want it for myself, not to save you,” Sirius adds, ruthless with his feelings. Now that he’s started, he _has_ to say this, before he says any of the other things he came in here thinking to say.

James needs to understand, really _get it_ , or they won’t ever be able to move past this. At least half of him thinks James must have figured it out already, that it must be why James has been so uncomfortable around him, and acknowledging it aloud is only going to make everything worse.

It’s the truth, though, and telling the truth seems like it should be a pretty fundamental part of marriage—assuming they’re even still going to get married after this. But if they’re ever going to get _anywhere_ , this seems like a pretty good place to start.

The silence that follows his announcement isn’t that long, Sirius can be objective enough to know that, but it _feels_ like it is.

“Well,” says James, finally, with a weak attempt at a crooked smile, “It’s not as if you could do better, I gotta say.”

“I wouldn’t want to,” says Sirius.

James’s smile fades a little, into something more solemn. More sincere. “Sirius.”

“Yeah?”

“I couldn’t, either.”

Sirius’s legs almost give out in relief. He locks his knees, though, because as great as that is—and it’s _really bloody great_ —it’s not _everything_. It doesn’t necessarily mean James actually wants to marry him back, it could just mean James doesn’t want to marry anyone else _more_.

“Yeah, but, James, I don’t—I wouldn’t even want to _try_ ,” Sirius says.

“No?” James asks, hoarsely.

“You’re already my, just, _everything_ , all of it, I’d do _anything_ for—”

And Sirius might have said more, he thinks he meant to, but James is leaning forward and grabbing the front of his fancy dress robes, right in the middle of the pleats, not even seeming to care that he’s wrinkling the hell out of them. He drags Sirius in close, then closer, close enough Sirius can feel James’s breath on his face, and James says, “ _Good_.”

His voice still sounds a little hoarse, but it’s fierce too, and his eyes are clear and bright and blazing where they’re holding Sirius’s. He says it again, just that one word, twice more, like repeating it makes it stronger, makes it mean more—and the way Sirius’s heart is pounding, it kind of feels like it might actually work that way, too.

Sirius thinks, maybe, if he kisses James now, it might not be the worst thing he could’ve done. He leans in.

The bag bumps James’s leg and he flattens his hand out on Sirius’s chest and pushes a little, stopping him. James looks down. “What’s that?”

Sirius has to look down, too, having forgotten he was still holding the bag, and when he sees it, his stomach drops a little. He grimaces. James makes a questioning noise.

“Oh. Gold. From Uncle Alphard,” says Sirius.

James squints down at it. “How _much_ gold?”

“Not enough to live on, I don’t think,” Sirius answers, having only counted it the twice. “But enough for one person to get away, maybe, to survive for a bit.”

James stares at him. After a moment, voice gone very cool, he says, “Your uncle gave you cold feet money.”

“Uh. I guess?”

“When?”

“Pretty much right after we got back from school. At that party my folks had.”

“What’s it doing in your hand right now?” James pushes Sirius away a little. His face is tight. “Why’d you bring it in here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Sirius.

“ _Stop saying that_ and just tell me.”

“Really, it doesn’t matter, not anymore,” he tries.

“ _Sirius_.” James plants his hands on his hips and narrows his eyes.

Sighing, telling himself he doesn’t already miss James touching him, Sirius looks away. “I was gonna offer to use it—or give it to you.”

“You were going to _run away_?” James asks, a little shrilly.

“Yeah. If you wanted me to.” Sirius doesn’t risk a glance at James to see what he’s doing, but he wants to. “Only if you wanted.”

There’s a long, quiet moment. Then James’s hand on his cheek turns Sirius’s face back, and James is giving him a heartbreakingly soft look totally unlike his expression from just a moment ago.

“You, Sirius,” James whispers, stepping back in close, “are an absolute idiot.”

“Oh, am I,” says Sirius. He tries to ignore the way his heart is going too fast, because this time it’s not about being afraid. There’s nothing in James’s expression for him to fear.

“You’re still trying to get me out of this,” says James. It’s not a question.

“Well, yeah,” Sirius says, and shrugs, awkward and uncertain, “‘course I am.”

“Because you think that’s what I want,” James says.

Sirius swallows, throat thick. “Isn’t it?”

“ _Idiot_.”

“So it’s not, then,” Sirius says, his heart thumping hard against his ribs like it’s expanding his chest with every beat.

“I _told_ you. No. It is _exactly the opposite_ of what I want,” James says. He raises his hands and makes a sweeping gesture down at himself, all decked out in fancy robes, and then around at the room with its obnoxious decorations. “As you can see by the fact I’m still here, getting ready to marry you even though I thought you hated me.”

It feels like taking a bludgeoning spell right to the face. Sirius rears back, he can’t help it. “Hated,” he chokes out. In all the time he’s spent afraid that was how _James_ felt about him, it hadn’t occurred to him that James might be just as afraid that Sirius felt that way about _him_.

James shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Bloody hell, James, I _would never_ —”

“Yeah, I know. Si, I _know_ ,” James interrupts hastily, reaching for him.

“But why would you even _think_ —” And seriously, if this is how it feels, Sirius is never, ever telling James that for a while he was thinking the same thing.

“Well what was I supposed to think,” James says, with a roll of his eyes, and a tiny impatient toss of his head. “You were going around acting all not- _you_ and treating me like I wasn’t _me_ , and you’ve never done that before. It was like you were faking it for me the same way you do, the way you did for the teachers.”

“I was not,” Sirius says, genuinely and honestly appalled at the very _idea_. “That was what _you_ were doing. Not me.”

James snorts. “Last month you gave me the smile you give Professor Slughorn.”

“I did _not_ , no way, I wouldn’t,” Sirius snaps.

“You so—”

“No I didn’t, and I know I didn’t, because I’m not in love with Professor Slughorn!”

James freezes, lips parting a little, and Sirius freezes too, as his brain catches up with his mouth. James just stares at Sirius, flush starting in his ears and slowly spreading red across his face.

“I’m not in love with Professor Slughorn either,” James says, the lamest, daftest thing _ever_ , but it still makes Sirius feel like someone just cast _Lumos_ behind his eyes and _Incendio_ on the inside of his chest.

And damn, that’s it, to hell with any silly reasons not to, fuck it all, Sirius is going to kiss him. He leans in, and,

and,

and Sirius almost misses the creak of the door opening, but James jerks his head away, his eyes widening.

“James, are you almost—Oh!” James’s mum stops halfway into the room. “Now, really, boys, this is hardly the place for that sort of thing. You’ll have plenty of time for it after the ceremony.”

Sirius scowls, just a little. He’s not a Legilimens, or anything, but he’s almost positive that James was going to let him kiss him just now, for real and all. A kiss for the sake of it, because Sirius just _wants_ to kiss him, no other reason.

He considers asking James’s mum to bugger off for a few more minutes.

“Right,” James says, with a completely uncalled for elbow to Sirius in the ribs, before Sirius can say anything, like he knows what Sirius was thinking even though _he’s_ not a Legilimens either. “Yeah, Mum, we were just—”

“Yes,” she says, arching a brow. “I know what you ‘were just’.”

#

Sirius gets hustled out of James’s dressing room despite all his protests, and made to go wait in the appropriate antechamber with his best man while they try to track James’s down so the ceremony can start. His best man is not sympathetic.

“People don’t want you to miss your own wedding because you’re snogging,” Regulus says, gin-dry, and just as unpleasant. “Oh, how terrible.”

“No, really, Reg, I think he would’ve kissed me back!”

Regulus raises his eyebrows. “What, just like he did all the other times you’ve kissed him over the last six months.”

“This is different.”

“I bet it’ll be different once you’re actually married, too.”

“But I want to kiss him _now_ ,” Sirius protests.

“You are so not a grown-up.”

“This from the sixteen-year-old.”

“ _I’m_ not the one standing around complaining because I didn’t get to mack on my soon-to-be husband _before_ the wedding.”

“No, but you _were_ standing around with my soon-to-be husband,” Sirius says, and starts to frown as he remembers it. “Why was that?”

“I got tired of you trading off moping and muttering like an insane person,” Regulus says. “And I thought maybe James could use the company.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I saw Lupin going to hide in the gardens earlier.”

“Is _that_ where he is?” Sirius asks. “What’s he doing out there?”

Regulus pulls an indignant, irritated face. “What, I look like I know? Have you lost your entire brain, or are you just so busy misinterpreting James that you don’t have time to do anything else?”

“Shut up, you—”

“All right, they’re ready for you,” Mum says, appearing in the doorway leading to the hall where the ceremony is taking place.

“You found Remus, then?” Sirius asks, even as Mum twitches her wand to straighten his robes with a few fretful yanks. He notices, with a sense of annoyed resignation, that she doesn’t seem inclined to give Regulus the same treatment—and worse, he’s noticed, too, and is smirking.

“Yes. Fool boy was napping under one of the trees, can’t think why, grass marks all down his robes,” Mum mutters. Finally she tucks her wand away, spins Sirius around to face the door she just came through, and gives him a little shove. “Go on, now. Places, boys.”

With no bride to march down an aisle, it had been settled that both grooms should take a short walk across the front of the room from either side to meet at the podium in the middle where they’ll say their vows, and the moment Sirius steps out he sees James across from him stepping in from the hallway. Everything else might as well disappear, for all Sirius cares.

James catches Sirius’s eyes, the corner of his mouth turning up—and the next thing Sirius knows they’re standing at the podium and James is clasping his hand, drawing him in, anchoring him, and there’s no going back from this.

The pompous Black cousin officiating clears her throat. Sirius doesn’t bother to look as she starts speaking about gatherings and unions and commitments and other nonsense.

“Will you, Sirius Orion, take James—” Pompous Officiant Cousin starts to ask.

“I will,” Sirius says, fast enough that he’s interrupting, and ignores the muttering and displeased noises from the crowd and their parents. He can hear Regulus trying to stifle snickers behind him, and behind James, Remus looks like he’d really like to introduce his own face to a desk or other hard surface, but Sirius ignores that, too. He quirks an eyebrow and a wink at James, gets a tiny smirk in return, this private and smug little expression, the one that comes out when Sirius has done something to be pleased with him about, like slip James a sugar quill when he’s had a bad day.

After a second, Pompous Officiant Cousin clears her throat, and when she asks James the same question, James lets her finish but keeps smirking, and says only, “Yes,” like it might as well be _duh_.

Sirius doesn’t know what his face does at that, but it wipes the smirk right off of James’s. He lets out a little gasp, bites his lip immediately after, and his eyes well up and spill over in the space of a couple seconds. Sirius would be alarmed, except seeing it on James, he’s feeling a suspicious prickling in his own eyes as well.

“… joined together for life,” Pompous Officiant Cousin says, finally, _finally_ , Sirius’s hands gone tight and a little sweaty around James’s, while the stupid showy wand wave sends little stars and sparks down all around them. James makes a noise like a cross between a laugh and a watery hiccup, and when Sirius looks away from the silver sparkling in James’s hair to his face, finds it shining bright with happiness.

Sirius has never seen a smile that big on James’s face while in the same room as Bellatrix or Mum or Dad. Maybe _ever_. His face is still wet, but it doesn’t seem to matter, he’s just beaming through the tears, and Sirius wants to kiss him more than he can ever remember wanting anything.

What’s more, he’s _allowed_.

So he does.

James kisses back, his mouth opening under Sirius’s and both hands coming up to cup the back of Sirius’s head. There’s applause, somewhere far away and unimportant, as Sirius takes a step in close and slides an arm low around James’s waist to tug him in and keep him there.

Something in Sirius’s chest feels like it’s soaring.

A throat being cleared at a really unnecessarily loud volume right near them makes Sirius break away from James and his _mouth_ sometime later. It’s Pompous Officiant Cousin, and from the sound of it, that wasn’t the first time she tried to get their attention by clearing her throat. There’s some discontented muttering going on among the guests. Sirius is pretty sure he hears Mum hissing threats or something.

James’s smile is beatific.

Sirius beams back.

An invisible stick prods him sharply in the side, until, wincing, he turns to face the assembled crowd. He keeps his nearest arm wrapped around James.

He catches Dad putting his wand away, just as Pompous Officiant Cousin declares, “I present to you, Mr and Mr Black-Potter! The grooms will be receiving well-wishes and gifts in fifteen minutes at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, along with their parents.”

That’s their cue to Apparate back to Mum and Dad’s house for the parts of all this that Sirius expects to _really_ bore him. Or, at least, he _expected_ that, before. Now that he and James are on the same page about things—and they _so_ are, that kiss was amazing—things might just be looking up a bit.

Maybe Sirius’ll get a chance to sneak a few more kisses from James.

He doesn’t.

“… will cease that uncouth display immediately,” Mum is saying, even as they arrive.

“But Mum!”

“Don’t you ‘but Mum’ me,” Mum says, ushering them into the foyer and drawing her wand.

Sirius takes half a step in front of James, and stops arguing. Apparently, though, Mum only means to flick their robes straight while muttering about how déclassé they are, _kissing_ each other, in _public_.

“I caught them at it before the ceremony, too,” James’s mum says, while James’s dad takes his turn straightening out their hair. Well, _James’s_ hair, with limited success—Sirius’s hair is still just fine, despite James having his hands all over it. He’s feeling pretty smug about that.

“Disgraceful,” Dad sniffs.

Finished with their hair, James’s dad chuckles. He takes a step back, and reaches into the inner pocket of his fancy robes—the one underneath the Potter crest—and pulls out a flat envelope.

“Here, before I forget,” he says, to James. “From your mother and me, to start things off before the guests arrive for the receiving line.”

James takes it and rips it open, tearing the flap a little, and pulls out the contents with Sirius peering over his shoulder. They both freeze.

“You got us a house?” James says, while Sirius is still busy staring at the deed James is holding. “A _house_?”

“It’s just a little cottage, really,” James’s mum says.

“Been in the family for years,” James’s dad adds. “It would’ve been yours eventually, anyway.”

“You mean we _won’t_ have to live with any of you lot?” James asks, eager.

Sirius’s head comes up, and he digs an elbow hard into James’s ribs. “Thank you,” he says, fast as he can to cover James busy being an idiot. “Really. It’s great. Thanks.”

James’s mum and dad smile at them. Sirius can _almost_ bring himself to forgive them for starting this whole farce. He smiles back with James anyway, because they’re kind of his parents now too, and he still likes them better than Mum and Dad.

Which, speaking of, the first guests are arriving before _they_ deign to give Sirius and James a wedding present. Because Merlin, Agrippa, and all the Founders forbid that Orion and Walburga Black make a social gesture without several dozen of their peers and sycophants there to see it.

“Thank you,” Sirius says, without any real enthusiasm. He lets James take the new Gringotts key to their joint vault, separate from the rest of their families’, and shove it into his pocket.

“Yeah,” James says, with about an equal level of excitement, “Thanks loads.”

Then there’s the rest of the receiving line, with the guests pausing on their way to the dining room to hand over their expensive and stuffy presents, and then an even stuffier dinner, which Sirius blocks out most of, because _dull_.

After that it’s just one more thing left, and that’s—

“Do we _have_ to sit for a portrait?” James asks, his eyes on Sirius’s mouth.

“It’s tradition,” Mum says, sounding stiff. She yanks James away to sit down, and Sirius has no choice but to follow.

They’ve got a love seat Sirius and James are meant to share, one on each cushion while the rest of their family stand around behind them. Sirius completely ignores his own cushion. He sits down on the edge of James’s and slides closer, crowding James against the arm.

“Really, now,” James’s dad says. He’s got that tone like he gets when he’d _really_ like a drink.

“What,” James demands. He’s grinning at Sirius instead of looking at the rest of their family— _family_ , singular, because they share one now. “We just got _married_ , I think we’re allowed to be close to each other.”

“But this is for the _port_ —” Mum starts.

Sirius has his mouth open to argue, but Regulus surprises him and gets there first. “Come off it, Mum, you let them share a _bed_ all break.”

“That is hardly—”

“And they’ve been going around school all over each other, making a spectacle,” Regulus continues. There’s a curl to his lips like he’s disgusted, but he’s standing up for Sirius, so Sirius doesn’t even mind that. “I really think the decorum ship has sailed.”

Mum draws her shoulders up, face furious. “I really don’t think—”

“Oh, let them be,” says James’s mum.

“Well, really,” Mum snaps. She looks like she’s possibly too angry to come up with more words, or maybe just doesn’t want to get caught trying to shout down James’s mum. Sirius has a feeling it wouldn’t work—he kind of wishes she’d try anyway.

“They’re not hurting anything,” James’s dad puts in.

“Can we just get this _over with_?” Uncle Cygnus asks, off in the back on what was meant to be Sirius’s side of the love seat. He’s got that look on his face, the really tired one he gets whenever he’s around Sirius too long.

“Please,” Dad says, falling in next to Uncle Cygnus, and a little in front.

“Yes, all right,” Mum says eventually, and moves to stand with Dad.

The Blacks definitely outweigh the Potters; James’s mum and dad never had any siblings and all James’s grandparents are dead already. It’s Mum and Dad, and their parents and siblings that are taking up most of the space around the love seat. Kind of depressing, really, especially since Narcissa’s weaseled her Malfoy into the picture somehow.

Sirius reckons, all things considered, that he does pretty well at behaving while the portraitist paints and spells and paints. Sure, his hand keeps ending up on James’s thigh, and James’s keeps wandering into Sirius’s hair and then Sirius has to tip his head down toward James to really enjoy that feeling, but they don’t get into any _trouble_. Sirius considers that a pretty big accomplishment, considering he keeps _thinking_ about casting a tickling charm or an itching hex, and Bellatrix is right there being provoking with her face. So really, they’ve practically been _angels_.

That’s an hour they’ll never get back.

“Can we _go_ now?” Sirius demands, afterward.

Mum’s face starts to scrunch up, while Dad sighs heavy and long. James’s dad shakes his head. James’s mum, though, smiles a little, and makes a shooing noise.

“Yes, yes. The house elves have prepared Sirius’s room for you, if your formal escort is ready to—”

“Oh, we’re ready,” Bellatrix says, from the front of the little group, smirking.

James scowls at her. “I will push you down the stairs.”

“Now, now, little _Black-Potter_. It’s your wedding night, shouldn’t you have better things to do?”

“I have the _best_ thing to do!” James retorts. Then he seems to realise what he’s said, and goes red while Bellatrix cackles.

It’s possible that Sirius casts a tripping hex at her on the way up the stairs, but nobody catches him at it, and anyway she doesn’t even go down more than two stairs, so it’s hardly worth mentioning.

#

They slam the bedroom door in the faces of the various cousins who’d volunteered to escort them upstairs.

“Blimey, that’s a weird and pervy custom,” James says, into the relative quiet of Sirius’s bedroom, over the continuing, muffled sniggers from outside.

“Those are probably two of the nicest adjectives to be used about my family in the last three centuries at least,” Sirius says, grinning.

James shoves at his shoulder. “Well don’t be _smug_ about it, or anything,” he says.

Biting down on a laugh, Sirius shoves back, but James goes with it, falling back until his shoulders hit the door. Sirius is right there with him, and suddenly anything like a smile is gone from both their faces.

“Hey,” Sirius says, low, leaning in. James tips his head up a little, and Sirius’s hand slips down from James’s shoulder to his upper arm. “James.”

Their mouths are inches apart when James makes a noise somewhere in his throat, one Sirius has never heard before, and the next thing he knows James’s hips are jolting out away from the wall, pressing forwards jerkily like maybe he didn’t really mean to move. Sirius’s eyes drop to follow the movement reflexively, and—

“Oh,” Sirius says.

“Sirius,” James says, and it sounds exactly like that noise he just made, all but a whimper.

Sirius reaches out with the hand not holding James to the door and moulds it over the front of James’s robes, and yes, that’s what he thinks it is. He feels James’s erection firm up even more against the palm of his hand.

“ _Sirius_ —”

“Oh, fuck,” Sirius hears his own voice mumble, but he hasn’t got any attention to spare for what his mouth is doing, because all of his is stuck on his hand, which has curled up around James and is sort of moving up and down, like he’s wanking—like he’s trying to make James—

James is turning red, starting at his cheekbones, the tips of his ears, and spilling down his face and neck. He keeps making those bloody whimpering noises, too, his hips jerking into Sirius’s grip. Sirius is breathing kinda hard himself.

“Bloody hell, James,” Sirius breathes.

“Don’t you dare sto— _oh_.”

James shudders in time with his cock jerking in Sirius’s hand, ridiculous hundred galleon dress robes going damp.

They’ve been in the room for maybe five minutes.

“ _Sirius_ ,” says James. He sounds half-drunk.

“Oh my _god_ ,” says Sirius.

James tackles him to the bed, apparently not at all concerned with either his ruined robes or with whether anyone else is still lurking outside the room and has maybe heard what just happened. Like he doesn’t care if they _did_. So of course Sirius kisses him.

“Si,” James says, mumbled because he doesn’t seem to want to stop kissing Sirius back for long enough to speak clearly. “ _Sirius_.”

Tingling all over, body feeling like it’s humming wherever it’s touching James’s even through their robes, Sirius helpfully moves his mouth away, sliding it over to bite a little at James’s jaw. “Yeah?”

“We’re _married_ ,” James says. He sounds _gleeful_.

“Yeah,” Sirius replies, closing his eyes and grinning against James’s skin. James’s weight all down his body feels perfect, especially over his hips, where Sirius’s cock is hard and straining. “Think I might’ve picked up on that.”

“You sure? You looked pretty out of it there during the ceremony.”

“You can talk, you were grinning your fool head off the entire time.”

“I was not,” James lies, laughing.

“Were too,” Sirius says, and gets his hands on James’s ass and gives it a squeeze for emphasis. It pulls James down tighter against Sirius, grinds James’s stomach over Sirius’s still very interested erection. Sirius’s breath kind of—hitches, entirely without his permission.

“Yeah?” James says, breathy into Sirius’s neck.

“Yeah,” Sirius admits, arching his hips to press against that firm stomach again. James huffs something that might be a laugh, and starts pushing down himself, helping Sirius grind into him. James’s teeth scrape against Sirius’s neck, like he’s thinking about biting him, maybe.

“C’mon, then,” James says. He does bite Sirius then, sucking over the same patch of skin to leave a mark, and grinds down to meet the rolls of Sirius’s hips.

Sirius comes like that, arching up and shooting off in his underpants, still fully dressed. James bites him a second time, and doesn’t climb off him.

“Why didn’t we have that talk ages ago,” Sirius says, once he’s got enough breath back for it.

“We could’ve been doing this for months,” James replies, and it’s not an apology, but it _is_ agreement, which Sirius is prepared to take as the same thing. He knows how James’s brain works, after all.

“Mm,” Sirius says. He stretches into the warm relaxed feeling, just for the reminder of how heavy and slow all his muscles have gone. “Yeah.”

After a bit, James squirms and says into the quiet, “So, this is, uh.” He coughs. “A bit sticky?”

Sirius barks a laugh, catches the next one behind his hand. “A bit, yeah,” he says, and then James is laughing too, the both of them setting each other off with a look or a twitch of their faces whenever they’ve almost stopped.

“When I imagined consummating my marriage, this is _not_ what came to mind,” James says, several minutes later.

“What,” Sirius says, still laughing a little, “you’re saying you actually thought about it?”

“Of course I—You _didn’t_?”

“Not _specifics_.”

“Then how did you think we were going to manage anything?” James demands. “We’re both _virgins_ , Sirius, or you are and I’m practically anyway, d’you understand how _badly_ this could go?”

Sirius raises an eyebrow very deliberately. “You mean worse than the last few months have gone?”

“Shut up,” James says, spell-flash fast, so it must be on reflex. His cheeks start going pink all over again. He looks away from Sirius, and starts squirming. “Merlin, c’mon, let’s get out of these awful things.”

They wriggle their way out of the stuffy robes, trying to help each other and getting in the way instead.

“Okay,” James says, barely ducking Sirius’s elbow to his nose, “Every man to his own clothes,” and after that it goes much more quickly. He shucks his pants right after the robes, without even hesitating, so Sirius does the same. He pretends not to see the flush on the back of James’s shoulders.

Sirius fishes their wands out, and while James bundles the whole lot and throws it in the far corner of the room, he casts a quick scourgify on each of them.

James chokes on a giggle. “Oi,” he says, kicking at Sirius’s ankle, “a little warning, Si.”

“You’re the one who said he was sticky,” Sirius says, unrepentant. He tosses their wands to the far edge of the bed.

“And that entitles you to sneak attacks?”

Sirius says, “I’ll show you sneak attacks,” and pulls James down to the bed sideways to kiss him some more.

It takes about two minutes for Sirius to realise that kissing while naked is ten times as fantastic as kissing with their fancy wedding robes on. They’re both getting hard again, bumping against each other, which is better, too.

James breaks the kiss without warning, and starts pulling away.

Sirius goes still, blinking. He wasn’t expecting James to want to _stop_. “Huh?”

James doesn’t say anything, propping himself up on one elbow, nudging Sirius’s legs apart with the other hand. He fumbles for his wand and mumbles something while he taps at Sirius’s leg.

“What’re you—” Sirius starts, then he feels the skin of his inner thighs go slick.

James points the wand at his own erection and repeats himself. He grabs his suddenly slippery cock and angles it to slide himself between Sirius’s thighs.

“Oh,” says Sirius.

“Close up,” James says. Sirius does, and then gasps as James starts moving, his cock squeezed in the tight space between Sirius’s balls and his thighs. James groans, deep, the kind of sound he makes when he takes a bludger to the stomach.

Swearing low, Sirius hooks a hand around the back of James’s neck and drags him down to kiss, while James works himself off between his thighs, bumping Sirius’s perineum on every other clumsy stroke and occasionally nudging his hole, which Sirius has never really thought too much of but which sure feels awesome _now_ , tingling and sensitive at every touch. James comes, splashing warm and sticky over Sirius’s thighs and every tender place behind his balls.

James draws himself away after, panting, and leaves Sirius’s skin a cooling mess.

“You are _not_ just gonna leave me—”

“Shut up,” James says, loose and half-slurred, scooting down, “I’m _not_.”

Then his mouth is on Sirius, wet and hot and _tonguing_ him, which is absolutely the best thing all night, and Sirius shuts up. When he comes a little later, he makes a really undignified whimper and thumps his head back against the mattress.

James shuffles back up the bed, wiping his mouth on the side of his hand. “Told you I wasn’t,” he says, reaching for his wand to clean them up again. He laughs when Sirius gives a twitch and a smothered yelp at the sensation. Sirius flails a couple of slaps at him until James leaves off and flops down at his side.

“You’re the best husband ever,” Sirius says, eventually. “Your ideas are _really_ good.”

James hums, smug. “You think that was good? Wait until you see what else I’ve come up with,” he says. “That was just the easy stuff.”

A shudder passes down Sirius’s spine. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” James says, and Sirius can feel him grinning against his bare shoulder.

“… hey, imagine if you’d tried that on Bellatrix,” Sirius says.

There’s a moment of silence while, Sirius presumes, James takes the opportunity to absorb the gravity of that suggestion.

“Oh Merlin’s holey shorts, I _bloody hate you_ ,” James says, shrill and outraged, bolting upright to glare down at him..

Sirius means to apologise, he really does. Or else he _mostly_ means to, but he cracks up again instead, and what comes out of his mouth is helpless laughter.

“Shut _up_ , I seriously hate you so much,” James is saying, smacking at Sirius’s chest. “I am _never gonna get that_ out of my head!”

“Sorry,” Sirius manages through the giggles, “Sorry, love you, ‘m _sorry_ ,” and he cups the back of James’s head to draw him in for a kiss. Their noses bump, the hard edge of James’s glasses catching Sirius in one eyebrow and then the other cheek—because they’re a _mess_ , frames on crooked and the lenses spotted with Sirius doesn’t even want to think about what, but James doesn’t seem to have notice and Sirius isn’t planning to mention it—before Sirius manages to line them up even halfway decently.

By the time their mouths slip against each other, James is laughing too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone scarred by Sirius mentioning Bellatrix in that last scene, please send your therapy bills to [duva](http://archiveofourown.org/users/duva) as it was her idea. ;-)
> 
> Because I’ve spent so long on this fic already that I fully intend to beat this universe until it’s dead, stay tuned for deleted scenes and AUs (yes, of this fic that is already an AU)! Also, check me out [on tumblr](http://fictionalcandie.tumblr.com/).


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